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Acute and Chronic Unbelief 





Acute and Chronic 
Unbelief ; 


Its Cause, Consequence and Cure 


By 


ALBERT CLARKE WYCKOFF 


Professor of Psychology of Religion, the Biblical 
Seminary, New York, NV. Y. 


Author ay ‘The Non-Sense of Christian Science,”’ 
‘‘The Science of Prayer,’’ etc. 





NEw YORK CHICAGO 
Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, 1924, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


PREFACE 


r A HREE factors enter into the problem of 
religious belief—the belief, the believer, 
the interpreter of the belief. Any one of 

these has the power to cause the reaction of un- 
belief. The belief and the interpreter long have 
been the problems with which the theologian and 
the Biblical scholar have dealt. The personal 
equation introduced by the personality of the un- 
believer is now receiving more attention. ‘To that 
portion of unbelief in which the personality of the 
unbeliever plays the dominant part we are going 
to devote this study. If this strict limitation of 
the subject is kept in mind, it will save much mis- 
understanding. Unbelief of this type involves 
more than a lack of intellectual assent to some his- 
toric doctrine. When it reacts against the cosmic 
factors in religious belief, it creates psychological 
disturbances of major magnitude, which seriously 
interfere with the normal functioning of one’s in- 
tellectual, moral and spiritual machinery. If this 
trauma of unbelief is too long neglected it keeps 
open a psychological wound around which the 
growth of misbelief develops. 

From the standpoint of health, medical science 
divides mankind into three groups: The healthy, 
the physically unhealthy, the psychically un- 
healthy. They are distinguished by their reac- 
tions under test to certain natural stimuli. The 
reactions of the healthy person are not conspicu- 

5 


6 PREFACE 


ously minus or plus, they are natural and normal. 
The reactions of the physically unhealthy are 
minus, they come short of the natural response. 
The reactions of the psychically unhealthy are 
plus, or exaggerated. They exceed the normal. 
From the standpoint of religious health, the 
psychologist divides mankind into three groups: 
The believer, the unbeliever, the misbeliever. ‘The 
reactions of the believer to the natural stimuli of 
the facts, truth and experiences of religion are not 
conspicuously minus or plus. They are natural, 
wholesome, normal. They explain themselves. 
The reactions of the unbeliever are minus, they 
fall short of the natural response to the facts, 
truth and experiences of religion, thus sub-belief 
is born. The reactions of the misbeliever are ex- 
aggerated, they go way beyond the natural re- 
sponse to the stimuli of the facts, truth and ex- 
periences of religion, thus super-beliefs are born. 
Up to this point the problem is purely psycholog- 
ical; not until the super-beliefs of spiritual healing 
are under consideration, do we encounter patho- 
logical conditions. 

For the purpose of experiment three major re- 
ligious beliefs have been selected—The Belief in 
a Personal God, ‘The Belief in Prayer, The Belief 
that Jesus is the Christ. ‘These beliefs have been 
chosen because of the curious psychological fact 
that all unbelief, misbelief, and normal religious 
belief consciously or unconsciously revolve around 
these three concepts. We will watch the reactions 
of the typical believer, the typical unbeliever, the 
typical misbeliever as they respond to these 


PREFACE 7 


stimuli, and incidentally observe some most inter- 
esting behaviour. 

The physician finds that the human body regis- 
ters its normal health through the delicate balanc- 
ing of the two opposing elements of heat and cold 
at the mean temperature of ninety-eight and three- 
fifths degrees, Fahrenheit. In like manner, the 
psychologist has discovered that normal religious 
health is maintained by the delicate balancing of 
the two opposing elements of the intellect and the 
emotions at the mean temperature of ninety-eight 
and three-fifths degrees, friendship in the individ- 
ual and fellowship in the ecclesiastical organism. 
The religious vitality of the organism, whether 
individual or ecclesiastical, depends upon this 
volatile balance. The slightest disturbance of its 
equilibrium throws the organism into a state of 
unrest or inflammation, which gives the clue to the 
cause of unbelief and misbelief. If the intellec- 
tual element is overbalancing the emotional, un- 
belief begins to appear. If it reduces the emo- 
tional element to the zero point, atheism develops. 
If the emotional element is overbalancing the in- 
tellectual, misbelief begins to appear. If it re- 
duces the intellectual to the zero point, occultism 
develops. 

As the human body functions best for general 
satisfaction to the individual and society when it 
is in normal health, so religious life functions best 
for general satisfaction to the individual and 
society when its health is normal. Rationalism 
and pietism are ancient, ecclesiastical foes, dis- 
turbing the peace and harmony of the Church 


8 PREFACE 


with their strife—first the one, then the other, 
holding the fort. The psychologist diagnoses all 
such outbreaks as religious epidemics caused by 
too much intellectualism or too much emotional- 
ism disturbing the delicate balance of normal re- 
ligious health conditions, and spreading through 
infection to abnormal proportions. The remedy 
is not the extermination of the one element or the 
other, but the restoration of their delicate balance 
at the mean temperature of normal religious 
health. For it is only when this balance is dis- 
turbed that these elements create inflammation, and 
seriously disrupt fellowship. 

This book undertakes pioneer work in this new 
field of religious research. It will undoubtedly 
exhibit the defects of all pioneer work, but if it 
helps the reader to understand the psychological 
background of this type of unbelief and misbelief, 
and stimulates further investigation in this new 
field, it will have served its purpose. 

To the publishers of The Biblical Review 1 
wish to express my appreciation of their kindness 
in permitting me to republish several articles as 
chapters in this book. The chapter on Chronic 
Unbeltef has been circulated quite widely in 
pamphlet form. 

A. Cr Wi 

Reformed Church, 

SPRING VALLEY, N. Y. 


Contents 


PART I 
Unbelief or Sub-belief 


ie ACUTE UNBELIEF ie it y y 


Natural adolescent doubt artificially stimulated into 
reaction of positive unbelief by defects in train- 
ing and education—Home, Church, College big 
factors—How to prevent—How to cure. 


II. CHRONIC UNBELIEF~ - ih re ud 


Unnatural adult hostility toward religion—Chronic 
unbeliever a constitutional « aginer’’—Kink in 
temperament of child creates complex—Adult 
becomes its victim—Mr. H.G. Wells, Professor 
James Henry Leuba, Friedrich Nietzsche, typical 
cases—Religious medication a cure for unbelief. 


PART II 
Super-belief or Misbelief 


III, Occu tis - is a he b id 


Misbelief middle-life ailment—Failure to meet 
successfully psychological crisis in life opens up 
spiritual wound of religious indifference—Con- 
stant irritation starts up virulent psychological 


growth of misbelief—Occultism’s panaceas— ° 


Christian Science, New Thought, Spiritism, 
Theosophy as painless remedies—Why they 
prune the growth— Psychological operation most 
effectual cure. 


9 


13 


4I 


69 


10 CONTENTS 


IV. Tue Super-Beviers OF SPIRITUAL 
HEALING - rg _ a “ Betsy) 


Unbelief and misbelief lack vital elements to keep 
spiritual life healthy—Psycho-physical ailments 
result—Type of persons susceptible—Panaceas 
offered by spiritual healing cults—Wherein they 
fail—Normal religious belief as a preventive and 
cure. 


PART III 
Normal Religious Belief 


V. BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD - s a: VERS 


Human personality will not permanently accept 
reality interpreted in terms lower than person- 
ality—Unbelief and super-belief cults furnish 
curious substitutes—Why they fail to satisfy— 
Why a Personal God satisfies—Psychological 
argument new, comprehensive, convincing. 


VI. BELIEF IN PRAYER . - - - 155 


Prayer psychologically capable of sublimating in- 
stinct of selfishness and turning its anti-social 
energy into a constructive force for building up 
and sustaining Home, Church, State—Selfishness 
back of present-day problems in Home, Church, 
State — Psychological cause of divorce. One 
function of prayer. 


VII. Tue Beier THAT JESUS IS THE CHRIST - 188 


Messianic consciousness of Jesus baffles psycholo- 
gist—Either abnormal or supernormal—Pathog- 
raphers endeavour to prove Jesus abnormal, psy- 
chically unsound— Proofs considered—Failure to 
prove Him abnormal leaves psychology with a 
supernormal Jesus—A Mediatorial position— 
The christs of unbelief and super-belief cults 
compared with The Mediator, Jesus Christ— 
Unique personality of Jesus Christ distinctive 
feature in Christian religion—Naturally mediates 
pei gs human personality and personality of 

od. 


PART I 
UNBELIEF OR SUB-BELIEF 





I 
ACUTE UNBELIEF 


S the skillful physician distinguishes be- 
A tween chronic and acute disease, treating 
each according to its nature, soethe psy- 
chologist distinguishes between chronic and acute 
unbelief. ‘Though many of the symptoms are the 
same, yet there are clearly marked differences. 
Chronic unbelief is an attack from which the 
victim does not recover with normal rapidity. 
Acute unbelief is an attack from which the patient 
recovers in a natural way. ‘There are a number of 
obvious symptoms which enable the one to be dis- 
tinguished from the other. As there are certain 
types of chronic invalids who seem to enjoy poor 
health, so the chronic unbeliever is the kind who 
seems to enjoy his unbelief. He is an unbeliever, 
and is proud of it. At least he tries to make 
others think he is. The person suffering from an 
attack of acute unbelief is in real distress of mind 
and spirit. ‘The cause of this distress, confessed 
or repressed, is the real cause of the attack of un- 
belief. Chronic unbelief is an adult disease, and is 
constitutional in its nature. Acute unbelief is a 
disease of the later adolescent period, and is in- 
stitutional in its nature. 

The Nature of the Malady. The adolescent 
period has long been recognized as the natural 
time for religious decision. ‘The largest number 

13 


14 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


of conversions are experienced at this stage of 
development. But conversions never register one 
hundred per cent. of the adolescents. For it is 
possible to decide against, as well as for religious 
faith. ‘Those who decide for, become believers; 
those who decide against, become unbelievers. If 
this decision settled the question for all time, our 
present problem would be simple. But there is a 
constant shifting back and forth from one of these 
positions to the other during the whole of the 
adolescent period. Many of the unbelievers, as 
their psychological problems become satisfactorily 
adjusted, move up into the believers’ group, and 
many of the believers, as their psychological prob- 
lems become more and more disturbing, move back 
into the group of the unbelievers. The stress and 
strain of the momentous physiological, psycholog- 
ical and social changes which are experienced by 
the adolescent, subject one’s spiritual, moral and 
intellectual nature to heavy demands. ‘The rapid 
development of one’s personality to the point of 
self-conscious individuality, the sudden emergence 
of a new world of ideals and social responsibilities, 
stir up a resistance against the authority which up 
to this time has held the child under control. The 
two mightiest regulating forces against which re- 
bellion rages are parental and religious authority. 
At this crisis, the home and the Church have need 
for infinite tact, wisdom and codperation. In 
moments of crisis, this truth is instinctively real- 
ized. 

One evening recently, the writer’s door-bell 
rang; when the door was opened, a woman was 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 15 


seen standing before it apparently in a state of 
great agitation. Bursting into tears she said: 


For the first time in my life I feel the need for 
spiritual help, and I thought you might be able to 
give me some. We can do nothing with our daugh- 
ter. My husband and I have both been talking with 
her, but it does no good. You cannot reason with 
her. She wants to go out in company with young 
people with whom we do not wish her to associate, 
and to go to places where we do not wish her to go. 
When we tell her this is wrong, she says: “I do not 
think everything wrong you and Father do.” And 
when finally her father put his foot down and forbade 
her to go, she replied: “I will submit until I am 
eighteen, then I will leave home and do as I please.” 
(And the mother added, again bursting into tears) : 
And she will be eighteen next month, and she has 
almost broken my heart. 


The girl in question is a very popular young 
girl, with a character and reputation beyond re- 
proach. But she has reached the point where she 
is in rebellion against what she feels is unreason- 
able restraint. Every adolescent has something 
at stake in a conflict of this kind, which parents 
often in their ignorance are unwilling to recognize. 
It is a rapidly developing individuality, and it must 
be given its legitimate place in the family circle. 
Any boy or girl who possesses a personality of 
dominance, is going to fight for its emerging life 
with elemental fierceness. ‘The first battle often 
has to be fought against too unyielding parental 
control. If parents are wise enough to sense the 
need for reasonable readjustment of authority at 
this period, serious consequences are averted. 


16 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


The next line of defenses which are attacked are 
those of religious authority. For religion is a real 
regulative power in the life of a child. Here, how- 
ever, open revolt does not accomplish the desired 
object. For one’s own conscience is such a large 
factor in the problem that some other tactics must 
be adopted. It is for this reason that the subtle 
strategy of psychological camouflage is employed. 
While the problem is distinctly psychological, yet 
the intellectual difficulties which the progress of 
modern science and Biblical criticism have created, 
furnish a most convenient excuse for rejecting the 
authority of religion. If to the assertion: “I do 
not think everything wrong you and father do,” is 
added: “I do not believe everything you and father 
do,” the childhood defenses of home and Church 
are shattered. And the external authority which 
might have suppressed the growing individuality 
of the child is forced to allow this new personality 
to become a cooperator in making and exercising 
voluntary control. 

Up to this point, however, the young are only 
feigning intellectual unbelief. Genuine intellectual 
difficulties which strike deep down to the very roots 
of their religious faith are still unknown. Their 
real problems are moral and spiritual, and they 
know this perfectly well all the while they are 
trying to camouflage this fact by throwing up a 
barrage of intellectual difficulties between them 
and their elders. Genuine intellectual difficulties 
are rare among uneducated adolescents. ‘They do 
not develop sufficient interest in the intellectual 
problems involved to make that phase of the 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 47, 


problem of any vital importance. This is the 
reason they enjoy shocking their elders with their 
new ideas and denials. As soon as the religious 
worker understands this truth, it is a simple matter 
to dig down and find out the psychological trouble 
which is masquerading in the garb of intellectual 
unbelief. Little serious attention need be paid to 
the religious doubts and denials of this group of 
adolescents. For theirs is really pseudo-unbelief 
or rationalization. 

Genuine, acute unbelief does not develop into 
a specific malady, save in exceptional cases, 
unless the adolescent period is abnormally length- 
ened by a college course during which the 
intellectual difficulties of religious belief are 
reinforced and exaggerated by the instruction 
of the college class room. The very nature of 
college work tends to make intellectual problems 
overshadow all others. The young student enter- 
ing college experiences a complete reversal of all 
previous life-value judgments. In the home, 
physical health, good habits, morals and ideals hold 
the center of the stage of interest. The intellec- 
tual ideas of children are regarded as negligible. 
For they are nothing more than children’s ideas, 
anyway. But during the four years of college, 
these life-values change. Intellectual performance 
and ideas become the most important of all life 
factors. They determine one’s standing and 
efficiency. Where the home exercised its most 
careful supervision, the college exercises least. 
Moral supervision is reduced to a minimum; un- 
less the transgressions of a student assume most 


18 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


flagrant and notorious proportions, they are not 
taken under advisement by the college authorities. 
But intellectual performance and ideas are made 
the basis of rewards and honours. 

The most astonishing neglect remains to be men- 
tioned. College authorities do not seem to be suf- 
ficiently familiar with psychology to realize that 
the religious nature of the student is just as im- 
portant an element in personality as the intellectual. 
In the last analysis, history has proven that re- 
ligion is able to marshal all of the resources of 
personality, moral, physical, psychological and in- 
tellectual, and to command these in service, as no 
other power at the disposal of personality. For 
this very reason it possesses unique powers for as- 
sisting the individual and society in solving all 
physical, social, moral, psychological and intellec- 
tual problems. 

Mr. Frederick H. Nemeyer, Chairman of the 
Interfraternity Conference which was held re- 
cently at the Hotel Pennsylvania, New York, in 
addressing representatives from ninety-five col- 
leges, summed up their greatest problems in 
these words: “ Intemperance and poor scholarship 
are the two most serious problems with which the 
American college has to deal. Any one will recog- 
nize these two evils as moral and spiritual in their 
nature. Intemperance needs no comment. Poor 
scholarship in the American colleges is not caused 
by lack of mental power in the students. It comes 
from lack of interest and application. In other 
words, the cultural ideal has lost its grip upon the 
imagination of the American student. And philos- 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 19 


ophy traces this to lack of spiritual life. Is it a 
coincidence, or is it simply the operation of the 
law of cause and effect, that these ‘two most 
serious problems with which the American college 
has to deal,” are the ones with which religion alone 
by its very nature is best equipped to deal, and 
through its neglect in college circles, leaves the in- 
dividual and society without the power to cope 
with the situation? The intellectual life of the 
student is given supreme concern by the college, 
the religious life of the student is considered of 
so little importance that even chapel exercises are 
made voluntary, and no responsible interest 1s 
taken in their neglect. The intelligent student 
cannot fail to draw the inference, that the college 
does not regard one’s religious life as a factor of 
any serious importance. The result of this indif- 
ference is now beginning to tell upon the religious 
life of the student. Fully seventy-five per cent. 
of the students in our American colleges are suf- 
fering from a mild or severe attack of acute un- 
belief. As long as this state of affairs remains un- 
remedied, every attempt to settle the problems 
which spring directly from this cause, such as the 
moral problem of intemperance and the spiritual 
problem of “poor scholarship”? must be futile. 
Science, to-day, leaves the college without ex- 
cuse. Psychology has discovered the germ of 
acute unbelief, isolated it, and pronounced its 
nature psychological rather than intellectual. It 
has traced it to its natural breeding place—the 
modern college class room. Of course, as we have 
already indicated, there are many secondary 1n- 


20 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


cubators of this bacteria of acute unbelief. The 
adolescent mind is a very fertile one, the discon- 
tented mind is another, the supersensitive spirit 
is another, the inferiority complex is another, dis- 
appointment is another, modern literature is 
another. But no cultural idea of this nature could 
spread to such epidemic proportions among 
healthy-minded American adolescents without the 
intellectual support of the college class room. 

The Biology of the Bacteria of Acute Unbelief. 
It is fascinating to study the genesis of the bacteria 
of acute unbelief. The adolescent struggle for 
freedom from parental and religious authority, to 
provide one’s individuality with a chance to de- 
velop, creates an abnormal hunger in the mind of 
the growing boy and girl for the highly nitroge- 
nous findings of modern science and historical and 
Biblical criticism. When these intellectual dishes 
are prepared and served up in their best style by 
college professors who are chronic unbelievers, 
they are liable to tempt the ravenous appetites of 
adolescents to overindulge. No intelligent super- 
vision is exercised at this point by college authori- 
ties. It does not seem to have occurred to them 
that this sort of a thing can be overdone. And 
professors themselves often use little judgment. 
They not only encourage students to overindulge, 
but they are guilty of cramming unwelcome ideas 
down the throats of their students, even when they 
are able to see that these ideas are causing real dis- 
tress of mind and spirit. The natural consequence 
of such a procedure is that more of these ideas are 
devoured than the system of the student can digest 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 21 


and assimilate. This overplus of undigested ideas 
starts up fermentation of thought, this develops 
into metabolism of doubt, which causes a conges- 
tion of the reason, and acute unbelief results. As 
acute indigestion often arises from overindulgence 
in foods which consumed in moderation are health- 
giving, so acute unbelief is often caused by gorging 
one’s self upon the highly seasoned intellectual 
provender of new ideas. This can happen when 
every idea presented is fundamentally true. 

There is an art in teaching new truth which 
should be mastered by every college professor who 
instructs in those branches of learning which call 
for any radical readjustment of one’s life prin- 
ciples. A course of training in intellectual dietet- 
ics should be required of every one who is to teach 
adolescents. The applicant for a professorial 
chair should be made to demonstrate that he ap- 
preciates the importance of a balanced ration, and 
the necessity for regulating the portions of facts 
or truth doled out to the intellectual, moral and 
spiritual capacity of the student to digest and as- 
similate. All adolescents have a limited capacity 
for masticating, digesting and assimilating new 
knowledge. And this capacity varies for obvious 
reasons in different persons. ‘This is particularly 
true of religious truth. It is the hardest to digest 
and assimilate because of the moral and spiritual 
readjustments which it forces. "Those whose early 
training has made religion a vital factor in their 
lives, cannot digest and assimilate these new ideas 
as rapidly as those who have no particular religious 
or moral principles to readjust. This psycholog- 


22 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


ical fact receives no recognition in the average 
college class room instruction. 

If overfeeding of students upon new ideas were 
the only offenses against the psychological nature 
of the adolescent of which the college professor 
is guilty, the situation would not be so bad. But 
to this, many professors add the additional indis- 
cretion of deliberately stuffing the students’ minds 
with the unripe fruit of immature, religious, 
critical-scholarship theories. So that many cases 
of acute unbelief are nothing more than the green- 
apple colic of the reason. Adolescents are so 
eager to devour this variety of intellectual prov- 
ender, especially when it is served up to them by 
their college professors, that unusual caution is 
necessary. Older people use more judgment as to 
what they accept as true, and then their ideas are 
fairly well set, and are not easily changed, as the 
preacher soon learns. But adolescents furnish 
open minds to the professor. To this fact must 
be added the requirement for examination or test, 
which makes it necessary for the student to pay 
attention and to absorb something of the ideas 
taught. This is why the task of the teacher is so 
much easier than that of the preacher. 

When Professor Leuba sums up the theological 
situation in these words: “ Theism having become 
logically impossible and pantheism being practi- 
cally insufficient, where shall we look for a re- 
ligion of the future?” he is serving up the unripe 
fruits of scholarship to his students. When such 
statements as the above are heard in the class 
room or read in his book on 4 Psychological Study 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 23 


of Religion (see page 321), the impression is 
given that to the informed, theism has “ be- 
come logically impossible ” as a tenet of reason and 
faith. But what right has a college professor to 
inculcate that idea in the mind of the student? 
The verdict of scholarship and science has not yet 
been rendered in favour of atheism. And it is 
farther from favouring that theory than it was at 
the beginning of the century. A statement such 
as Professor Leuba makes above, might be justified 
in the company of his colleagues and peers, who 
are in position to weigh its evidence, and defend 
their religious beliefs; but immature adolescents 
have no defense against such generalizations. 

The extremes to which professors, who are 
chronic unbelievers, will go in their desire to un- 
dermine the religious faith of their students is 
illustrated by Professor Leuba’s pronouncement 
upon the observance of a national Thanksgiving 
Day. He says: 


Of the sense of a real, immediate dependence upon 
a personal divinity, there remains in Christian states 
but a few pitiable remnants. In the United States 
the most conspicuous one is the yearly proclamation 
of a Day of Thanksgiving by which the members of 
the nation are called upon to return thanks to God 
for the good that has fallen to their lot and that of 
the country during the year. From an expression of 
genuine belief, this custom has become an objectional 
tradition which, the sooner it is abandoned, the better 
for those who keep it up and for those to whom it is 
addressed. It were better, instead, that we should 
be taught to realize our dependence upon each other 
and the gratitude we owe to the millions who strive, 


24 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


often in material and moral distress, in order to build 
our material and spiritual prosperity (Belief in God 
and Immortality, p. 324). 


We are accustomed to have such professors at- 
tack beliefs that are fundamental to the Church, 
but this passage strikes at the foundations of the 
State, and so gives it a little different flavour. We 
can be sure that the students who have grown ac- 
customed to the attacks upon the belief of the 
Church find this new variety not quite as ap- 
petizing an intellectual morsel. In our study of 
chronic unbelief it will be seen why this flavour is 
easily thrown in. The practice of serving such 
intellectual provender to students produces the in- 
tellectual disturbance which we have termed acute 
unbelief. 

Let us put the matter in this fashion: Doubt is 
the natural intellectual hunger of the healthy- 
minded adolescent. The interrogation point is the 
hand that beckons the hungry mind to the banquet- 
ing hall where modern thinking has spread a most 
bountiful and appetizing feast of good things. It 
is not to be wondered at if the hungry mind of the 
modern adolescent prefers these new, freshly pre- 
pared viands of the present, to the cold, or 
warmed-over left-overs of the intellectual feasts 
of our fathers. All this they may be allowed to 
enjoy, without having their doubts nourished into 
positive unbelief. It is only when abnormally 
stimulated by certain intellectual ideas that adoles- 
cent doubt develops into positive unbelief. For 
psychology has clearly proven that this same ado- 
lescent period is the period of conversion. Doubt 


ACUTE UNBELIEP 25 


is a peculiar mental, chemical solvent that has the 
power to soften beliefs and ideas so that they are 
capable of being remoulded. When in this plastic 
condition it is not a difficult task to remould such 
beliefs and ideas into useful beliefs, or into un- 
belief. And the college professor, who has the 
adolescent under his teaching in the class room for 
several hours a day for five days a week, with the 
demands of examinations and tests thrown in, has 
the very best opportunity in the world to remould 
the beliefs doubt has softened, according to his 
will. And no preacher or religious teacher or 
parent, having only an occasional touch with the 
adolescent and no regular intellectual authority 
over attention, can compete against such an ad- 
vantage. The Roman Catholic Church realizes 
that this is too precious an opportunity to take any 
chances on, so it turns its adolescents over to its 
trained religious teachers. It would be well if 
Protestants began to realize why unbelief is be- 
coming epidemic among college students. 

The Sufferers. Having learned something 
about the psychological and mental factors which 
cause acute unbelief, let us now study some of the 
symptoms. For it is necessary to be able to diag- 
nose the disease. The average college professor 
not being in the least concerned over an attack of 
acute unbelief, but rather pleased with one, as a 
sign of intellectual development, has no realization 
of this phase of the problem. ‘The writer having 
conducted for years a sort of free dispensary for 
college students suffering from acute unbelief, 
naturally has had this side of the problem deeply 


26 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


impressed upon his mind and heart. The un- 
mistakable symptom of acute unbelief is real dis- 
tress of mind and spirit over the loss of religious 
faith. Sufferers from acute unbelief, like all suf- 
ferers, always seek out those whom they feel will 
understand their trouble and be sympathetic with 
them. So they do not go to those who have in- 
flicted the wounds. Space will not permit giving 
any adequate idea of the ceaseless procession of 
sick souls who have availed themselves of the free 
dispensary-help which we have given for years. 
Their appeals come from all over the world. 
Sometimes they present their cases in person, more 
often by letter. A typical case is described in the 
following letter. It reads: 


I am in trouble, and, having seen your works in 
The Biblical Review, I thought you might be kind 
enough to help me. All my ambitions have been 
stifled by the thought of the darkness of a future 
without God. Life seems worse than useless without 
Him. And, as much as I would like to be a Chris- 
tian, my prayers are never answered, and I am as far 
from God as if He did not exist. 

My misery is increased by the fact that I once 
knew the happiness that only comes to followers of 
Christ. When I was a child I was converted. The 
wonderful peace and love which so mysteriously 
steal into the heart of those who are truly converted 
was mine. That was ten years ago. Now I am 
twenty-two and a junior in college. With my pros- 
pects most people would be happy. Yet I am sad. 
I want back the love I have lost. The love that 
knows no limit. I know the beauty and happiness of 
a life that forgets itself in the service of God and 
others. No satisfaction will come to me until I find 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 27 


God and am able to lead the kind of life that He 
intends His children to lead. 


This letter puts the case in an unusually clear 
and forceful way. The real distress of mind and 
spirit which follows loss of genuine religious faith 
is evident. Stifled ambitions, sadness of heart, 
depression of spirit—these are psychological dis- 
turbances as destructive to normal life functions as 
physical illness. No intelligent, well-disposed pro- 
fessor would think of causing physical ill-health 
in his students, yet many of them thoughtlessly 
plunge them into psychological distress without 
realizing that their religious natures are entitled to 
as much consideration as their physical natures. 
While the majority of these young people finally 
recover their religious faith, some drift into in- 
difference and have their whole religious life per- 
manently debilitated by their attack of acute un- 
belief, while in others, the malady hangs on until 
it becomes deep-seated and chronic. The conse- 
quences to the individual and to the children of the 
second generation are serious. We will come 
upon some of them in our study of superbelief 
cults and spiritual healing. 

To make sure that we have not exaggerated the 
situation, we will let other college students give 
their testimony. In one of the largest women’s 
colleges in this country, the examination paper in 
a recent mid-year test contained this question: 


What answer would you make to this report in a 
city newspaper of recent date? 
“The clergyman declared that ‘ rationalistic criti- 


28 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


cism of the Bible is being taught by teachers and pro- 
fessors in colleges and universities throughout the 
country,’ and that it is undermining or destroying 
the religion which students acquire from home train- 
ing and church attendance in their early years.” 


As the college where this question was asked is 
one where great care is taken to make Bible study 
as constructive as possible, and where it is a re- 
quired part of the curriculum, we were greatly in- 
terested to know what the students answered. So 
we asked the instructor if we might be allowed to 
have a copy of their answers. Ina short time, the 
originals, marked according to the denomination 
of the student, were in our hands. A careful 
analysis of these answers throws an interesting 
side-light upon the relative efficiency of the relig- 
ious instruction of the various denominations, and 
the types of students who were most effected by 
the instruction of the college class room. We 
have space for only a couple of answers, but these 
we will make typical. One girl answers: 


If I were to write a report in answer to the recent 
criticism of Bible teaching in colleges and universities 
throughout the country, I should partially agree with 
that criticism. Many students who have come to 
college with a deep religious home training and 
church attendance in their earlier years have had their 
whole religious life undermined and destroyed. On 
the contrary side of this, I have also seen students 
who have had their religion strengthened by this 
rationalistic criticism of the Bible. A good deal de- 
pends upon the individual student, her previous train- 
ing, her attitude toward the rational criticism of the 
Bible, and above all upon the teacher. Some 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 29 


teachers by ruthless destructive criticism destroy re- 
ligious truths, while others by careful close scrutiny 
of the Bible construct and aid religious truths already 
learned. 


Another girl gives this answer: 


I think he is quite right but don’t think it does 
much harm. What difference does it make how 
much you undermine or destroy as long as you have 
something left. I have, but I know a good many 
who haven’t anything to put in the place of what has 
been lost. That is very pathetic, but a religion must 
be poorly grounded that can’t be attacked without 
falling. Frankly, I don’t think that there is enough 
constructiveness in the course. Too much emphasis 
is on tearing down and not enough on building up. 
I very much regret that the last day could not have 
been spent in looking back over the course and seeing 
what was left standing among the wreckage, and it 
is wreckage to a good many. If a person can’t erect 
anything herself then I think the course has done 
harm, but where she can, it has done good by making 
her think more seriously about her religion than she 
probably has done before. Also some girls don’t 
lose anything, as they feel that the explanations are 
artificial and superficial. I heard one girl last night 
say that she got completely carried away in the class 
and agreed with everything, but when she got home 
and thought it over she felt that the arguments had 
twisted and turned without really getting to the bot- 
tom of the thing. 


These are first-hand observations taken direct 
from the students who are still in college, and 
when it is realized that they are made on an ex- 
amination paper to the instructor who has had 
charge of the Bible study course, they may be 
credited with no exaggerated emphasis. ‘They are 


30 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


representative of the general opinion of the mem- 
bers of the class. ‘They are fair, frank, sane. 
Fach gives full recognition to the constructive 
value of these courses to “some’’; each also con- 
fesses that the destructive influence of these courses 
has affected “many.” One girl puts it thus: “It 
is wreckage to a good many.” The other girl says: 
“Many students . . . have had their whole 
religious life undermined and destroyed.” How- 
ever well-intended such courses in religious educa- 
tion are, their religious and spiritual value is deter- 
mined by the results obtained. If the “some” 
who have their religious life strengthened number 
twenty-five per cent. of the students, while the 
“many to whom it is wreckage,’ and who have 
had “their whole religious life undermined and 
destroyed,’ number seventy-five per cent. of the 
total, it does not take an expert mathematician to 
figure out that, from the standpoint of their relig- 
ious value, the experiment registers a heavy loss, 
which if persisted in for any length of time will 
bankrupt the faith. 

This, however, is the most encouraging depart- 
ment with which we have to deal. For the relig- 
ious expert accountant now reports that these Bible 
study courses are among the most constructive 
which touch the subject of religion. Quite apart 
from the actual content of the class room instruc- 
tion, the familiarity which the student gains with 
Bible characters and history, its moral and religious 
ideals and teaching, indirectly exerts a most salu- 
tary influence upon his or her religious attitude. 
It is in the department of special sciences, especially 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 31 


in biology, sociology and psychology, that the 
highest mortality rate for religious belief is reg- 
istered. This we feel confident is due to the fact 
which Professor Leuba brings out in his book 
Belief in God and Immortality, where he states 
that the great majority of the greater scientists in 
these departments do not believe in the existence of 
a Personal God. The exact percentages he gives 
are: Only nineteen and four-tenths of the greater 
sociologists believe in the existence of God, sixteen 
and nine-tenths of the greater biologists, and only 
thirteen and two-tenths of the greater psycholo- 
gists. So that if we restrict our discussion to The 
Great Denial, that is, of the existence of a Personal 
God, over eighty per cent. of the greater scientists 
teaching in our colleges and universities confess 
that they do not believe in the existence of a Per- 
sonal God. It is inevitable that such unbelief 
should manifest itself in their teaching of science 
at the point where it touches the subject of religion. 
The teaching and the writing of these scientists 
naturally become one of the primary causes of the 
epidemic of acute unbelief which is to-day spread- 
ing among college students. 

Twenty years ago, these professors endeavoured 
to maintain a policy of strict neutrality upon the 
subject of religion. Professor James’ book The 
Varieties of Religious Experience is a splendid 
example of that earlier spirit. Though not a be- 
liever himself, still he did give the religious idea a 
most impartial study. In fact, Professor Leuba 
was so annoyed by the concessions which Professor 
James made to religious beliefs, that he wrote a 


32 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


long criticism of this book protesting against this 
feature of Professor James’ work. ‘This criticism 
was reprinted in pamphlet form and given a wide 
circulation. In 1912, Professor Leuba published 
his book, entitled A Psychological Study of Re- 
ligion. In this he frankly states that he does not 
believe in the existence of an objective God, and 
argues that this fact places him in a better position 
to study the whole subject, because, not being a 
believer, he is able to approach the subject from an 
entirely unprejudiced point of view. In 1916 he 
published his book, entitled The Belief in God 
and Immortality. In this he frankly takes the 
offensive against theistic belief. He justifies his 
change of attitude by claiming that “at present 
these beliefs are hindrances to spiritual progress ” 
(see p. 823 f.). “ These beliefs ’—the belief in a 
personal God and in personal immortality—he 
characterizes as “‘morally inferior and, in pro- 
fessed followers of Christ, as reprehensible” (see 
p. 808). This being the case, those interested in 
morality and spirituality are duty-bound to take 
the offensive against these demoralizing beliefs 
and destroy them. Professor Leuba, himself, 
says: 


This is a relatively new phase for the controversy; 
it marks, it seems, the passage from the defensive to 
the offensive on the part of the disbelieving moralists ; 
the abandonment of the belief has become for these 
a condition of the attainment of the highest moral 
end (Op. cit., p. 308). 


It is this change of policy from strict neutrality 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 33 


to an open offensive that constitutes the most 
alarming phase of the modern situation. Such a 
challenge, frankly made, cannot go unanswered. 
Not only have diplomatic relations been abruptly 
broken off by the unbelieving scientists, and war 
declared, but hostilities have actually been opened 
up and the neutral territory of the college student * 
mind ruthlessly invaded. The wreckage which 
the college girl describes in her examination paper 
bears a striking analogy to that which Belgium 
experienced at the outbreak of the World War. 
The advance of the anti-theists into this neutral 
territory has been comparatively easy because the 
college student is theologically an unarmed civilian, 
living in neutral territory, not yet committed by 
adolescent decision to either side. Held by tradi- 
tional training to theism, but with great sympa- 
thetic interest in the relief from disturbing relig- 
ious authority and restrictions offered by atheism. 
Up to the present time the theists have not made 
strong enough protest against this unwarranted 
invasion, nor have they any adequate force on the 
scientific fronts to put up an effective resistance. 
The writer, who was with the Rainbow Division 
upon the five battle fronts of France during the 
five major engagements, is not a pacifist, and does 
not take graciously to the glory of well-ordered 
retreats. He feels that the longer the enemies of 
theism are allowed to advance unopposed through 
this neutral territory of the college student mind, 
the more damage there will be caused, which will 
have to be repaired. And, much of it never can 
be repaired, or recompensed. If there were any 


34 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


justifiable reason for allowing this advance, it 
would be different. But there is no intellectual 
justification for it either in modern science or 
philosophy. And the time has arrived when some 
resistance should be made. ‘The best defense is 
always an offense. The forces of theism should 
be marshalled and—but—this analogy of the great 
“ offensive’? which Professor Leuba has precipi- 
tated is so militaristic in its militant spirit that it is 
in danger of marching us off into an entirely dif- 
ferent trend of thought, so we had better drop 
this analogy of military science and return to the 
most pacific one of medical science. 

The Cure, First. If our returning academic 
spirit serves us right, we were busy with the sub- 
ject of acute unbelief. We had discovered that 
the adolescent is the particular type of person who 
is most susceptible to its ravages. We diagnosed 
the nature of the malady, studied the biology of its 
bacteria, and analyzed a few cases of those who 
were actually suffering from the ailment. It was 
at this point that Professor Leuba’s declaration of 
war against the beliefs of theism and personal im- 
mortality, in the avowed interests of the moral and 
spiritual progress of humanity, diverted us into 
the militaristic spirit and parlance. We pick up 
our problem at the point where a cure for acute 
unbelief is to be considered. In epidemic diseases, 
that is, those that can be communicated to others 
through infection, medical science has adopted a 
twofold scientific method of treatment. First, and 
most important, it has inaugurated what it calls 
“ preventive measures.” 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 39 


These are divided into two kinds—sanitary and 
prophylactic. Sanitary science deals with the 
breeding places in which the disease germs are 
endemic. It traces the germs back to their sources, 
and destroys them there. We have shown how 
adolescent doubt is unnaturally stimulated by the 
college class room until it becomes positive un- 
belief. While sanitary science demands the merci- 
less destruction of these breeding places and the 
isolation of the carriers until they are free from 
the power to contaminate, we are constrained to 
mitigate these inexorable demands of sanitary 
science. We would mercifully recommend that 
the colleges be allowed to exist, and that the guilty 
professors be still permitted to teach the sciences 
in which they are eminent, but we would insist 
that they be not allowed to deal with the problems 
of religious belief. These subjects should be com- 
mitted to scientists and psychologists equally well 
informed in these sciences, who sympathetically 
understand the religious nature and needs of the 
student, and who are specialists in the department 
of religion as well as in the department of science. 
This preventive measure which we will call the 
sanitation of religious instruction is as important 
in the realm of religion as it is in medical science. 

Second. The prophylactic measures employed 
by medical science provide the physician with 
carefully prepared serums which are injected into 
the body of the one who is treated. These serums 
contain germs which instantly set up a fight against 
the invading disease germs, and overpowering 
them, keep the person free from the disease. The 


36 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


miracles which these serums wrought during the 
World War in preventing any epidemics of typhoid 
fever in those infested regions of the war front, 
and in warding off tetanus from the poison of 
bullet and shrapnel wounds, are sufficient to estab- 
lish their value beyond dispute. The science of the 
psychology of religion should provide parents, 
preachers and teachers with the ability to diagnose 
the spiritual perils to be encountered during the 
adolescent period, and the proper serums to be in- 
jected into their minds to prevent acute unbelief. 
For the college student, the serum of previous 
information concerning the essentials of the new 
scientific and Biblical knowledge so far as it is 
related to religious belief, should be injected into 
the minds of the boys and girls while they are 
still under the influence of parents and home, be- 
fore the time when ideas per se become too absorb- 
ing. If this is intelligently and sympathetically 
done, college instruction will not cause any radical 
readjustments of ideas, and immunity will thus 
be secured. 

Third. Until these scientific preventive meas- 
ures are adopted in the psychological realm of 
religious belief, it will still be necessary to employ 
some therapeutic measures. Much can be done to 
relieve the real distress of the mind and spirit of 
the victim of acute unbelief, by showing that the 
first-hand data of modern science and psychology 
are not anti-theistic. The trouble does not arise 
from the facts in the case, but from the interpre- 
tation of these facts by chronic unbelievers. Why 
chronic unbelievers thus interpret them will be 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 37 


shown in the next chapter. The knowledge that 
one may fearlessly open one’s mind to all of the 
assured findings of modern science and philosophy 
and have one’s belief in God strengthened instead 
of weakened in the process, brings surprising re- 
lief to the mind of the young person suffering 
from acute unbelief. But there is no chance to 
bring this relief unless the facts of science are 
given fair and scholarly treatment. The unbe- 
liever must be inspired with the confidence that 
the person who attempts to bring about this recon- 
ciliation between modern science and philosophy 
and religion has mastered these departments of 
modern knowledge so far as they touch the sub- 
ject of religion; and, in addition, has mastered 
the subject of religion far better than the chronic 
unbelievers who have wrought his or her faith’s 
undoing. If this psychological attitude of con- 
fidence can be created, the recovery from acute 
unbelief will speedily be experienced. So uni- 
formly successful has been this treatment, that it 
may be pronounced a specific for acute unbelief 
of the college intellectual type. 

Fourth. Because the relationships of college 
life are temporary, and to a great degree artificial, 
they do not possess the power to stabilize the 
equilibrium of sound reasoning upon life prin- 
ciples. The natural conservators of religious faith 
are lacking in the college environment. Normal 
daily-life contacts and responsibilities have no 
chance to operate. But as soon as the college 
course ends, these relations are reéstablished. ‘The 
entering into business or a profession, the respon- 


38 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


sibilities of citizenship in one’s community and 
nation, the starting of a home of one’s own, and 
the coming of children into this home, create con- 
tacts which conspire to keep faith in God alive. 
These normal-life experiences act as a balm to 
one’s injured faith, and gradually reduce the in- 
tellectual inflammation to the point where normal 
religious habits and devotional practices can be 
resumed without undue irritation. 

Fifth. If the adolescent is going to be held, or 
won back, to religious faith, more romance must 
be put into believing. The deductive theological 
reasoning which fascinated our fathers, and at- 
tracted the finest minds of their day to its service, 
makes little appeal to the modern mind. The 
scientific thinking of inductive reasoning makes the 
corresponding appeal to-day. There is something 
in the inductive method that inspires intellectual 
confidence and encourages the attitude of belief. 
To stand upon the firm edge of facts gained 
through the rigid empirical method of observa- 
tion and experiment, and from this vantage point 
to leap forth into the unknown upon faith in one’s 
theories or beliefs, thrills the soul with adventure. 
When this method is universally employed in the 
search for and presentation of religious truth, the 
intellectual thrill of true romance will be expert- 
enced in religious thinking. 

But this is not enough; romance must be put 
back into living the faith. The psychological value 
of believing certain specific religious truths, and 
the consequent necessary struggle to believe them, 
and to defend them against unbelievers, and to 


ACUTE UNBELIEF 39 


convert unbelievers into believers, furnishes a field 
for adventure in the moral and spiritual realm 
which should appeal to the adolescent spirit. 
When religious belief is reduced to the proposi- 
tion of cool, calculating, playing safe, it may ap- 
peal to adults, but it has lost one of its most at- 
tractive features for the young. Those who were 
with our soldier boys on the battle fronts of 
France, can never forget the eagerness with which 
they welcomed the calls which plunged them into 
the thick of the fight, where danger was greatest. 
This same adventurous spirit should find an out- 
let in moral and spiritual life. There is always 
something wrong with the religious belief of an 
age in which there is more adventure and daring 
in denial than in belief. The psychologist knows 
that belief is positive and constructive, that un- 
belief is merely negative, restrictive, or destructive. 
The respective merits of the two experiences from 
the standpoint of psychological satisfaction are not 
even open to argument. Yet during the last half- 
century unbelief has been more daring than be- 
lief. It has fearlessly led every great offensive; 
and consequently has kept belief always on the 
defensive. This fact impresses the adolescent with 
the feeling that unbelief has the stronger position. 
Whereas, we hope to show that this impression is 
wrong. 

In St. Paul’s day, unbelievers gained no ad- 
vantage of position from this angle. For the en- 
thusiasm, fearlessness, abandon, heroism of be- 
lievers so eclipsed that of the unbelievers that the 
impression which believers made upon human his- 


40 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


tory survives to this day, while the unbelievers 
have been forgotten centuries ago. How much 
more ought the challenge of the intellectual, moral, 
political, financial, and international problems of 
to-day to put twentieth century Christians upon 
their mettle, and stir into action all the love of ad- 
venture that slumbers in the adolescent soul! The 
fight to make the religious and social ideals of 
Jesus dominant in the life of the world, and to 
keep one’s faith in these ideals in the midst of 
indifference, temptations, and opposition should be 
accepted as life’s greatest battle, and victory—tiife’s 
greatest achievement. ‘This was true with St. 
Paul. In his valedictory, he bows farewell to life’s 
arena with these triumphant words: “I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my career, I 
have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). To keep the 
faith is much, but St. Paul really did more than 
this. He accumulated faith, as the years rolled by, 
instead of losing the little with which he began, 
and this made life a game, as he loved to picture 
it, infinitely more fascinating and worth playing 
than the game in which one merely accumulates 
dollars. For “ now abideth faith, hope, love, these 
three” (1 Cor. 18:18). Tennyson caught the 
thrill of the sport of accumulating faith through 
overcoming life’s experiences, and so he crowns 
his hero with this plaudit: 


He fought his doubts and gather’d strength, 
He would not make his judgment blind, 

He faced the spectres of the mind 

And laid them: thus he came at length 

To find a stronger faith his own. 


II 
CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


HILE there are those who fight their 
W doubts and by overcoming them find a 
stronger faith their own, there are al- 
ways a small number who are so constituted that 
from the early days of childhood they reverse this 
process, and fight their faith and foster their 
doubts. With few exceptions, these furnish us 
with our typical chronic unbelievers. As has al- 
ready been stated, chronic unbelief is an attack 
from which the person does not recover in a 
normal and healthy manner. To compensate for 
the great loss of religious faith and experience 
from which the chronic unbeliever is a lifelong 
sufferer, the victim endeavours to make a virtue 
out of his affliction, and consoles himself with the 
thought that it is his unusually keen mind, or his 
superior knowledge of science or philosophy, or the 
Bible, or his intellectual honesty, or his exceptional 
moral courage in the pursuit of truth, which are 
responsible for his unbelief. He cannot help this 
natural superiority, or consent to think with the 
crowd. ‘This conscious and unconscious self-flat- 
tery is one of the strong tenets of the cult of the 
unbelievers. It is the veritable staff of their spir- 
itual life, the bread and wine of their communion 
feasts. This conceit of unbelievers is indulged 
with amazing benevolence by most intelligent be- 
lievers. 
AI 


42 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


A typical illustration of the way unbelievers play 
up to this conceit is found in Professor Leuba’s 
books. We have already seen this in the case of 
his statements concerning college students and 
eminent scientists. He concludes his book A 
Psychological Study of Religion with this passage: 


The leaders in philosophy, science, literature, and 
even in religion, as well as increasing numbers of the 
rank and file, reject openly or secretly the traditional 
Christian belief in a Divine Father in direct com- 
munication with man (p. 315). 


Unbelievers endeavour to create the impression 
that the necessary price one is compelled to pay 
for possessing natural gifts leading to eminence 
and for moving up into the truly cultural group is 
the loss of one’s early religious faith. A guilty 
feeling something akin to sacrilege steals over one 
when forced to disturb this long-cherished con- 
ceit of unbelievers. But two obvious facts chal- 
lenge its truth. 

First. All intellectual persons endowed with 
natural gifts leading to eminence, though possess- 
ing exactly the same scientific or philosophical 
knowledge, equal intellectual integrity, and un- 
questioned moral courage in the pursuit of truth, 
are not unbelievers. And conversely, not all un- 
believers are possessed of this much-vaunted keen- 
ness of mind, superior scientific and philosophical 
knowledge and high courage in the pursuit of the 
truth. Some of the leaders of the cult do possess 
some of these gifts and qualities of mind and 
spirit, but the full roll of unbelievers includes more 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 43 


defectives, delinquents, criminals, anarchists, weak- 
minded and ignorant persons, than that of the 
believers. Man for man, they average far lower 
in the scale of intellectual, moral and spiritual de- 
velopment than the much-despised rank and file of 
the believers. And as for strength of character, 
virtue, and courage, does not Professor James 
make this acknowledgment? 


The best fruits of religious experience are the best 
things that history has to show. . 

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, pa- 
tience, bravery to which the wings of human nature 
have spread themselves, have been flown for religious 
ideals (Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 259 f.). 


History confirms Professor James’ verdict. It 
unhesitatingly accords its highest place of honour 
to the greatest religious believer of the centuries 
—Jesus Christ. This more accurate checking up 
of the intellectual and moral status of the unbe- 
lievers forces the psychologist to search in some 
other quarter for the tap-root of unbelief. 

Second. The unbelief of the present is not born 
of modern scientific discovery. In later chapters 
this fact will be brought out more clearly; at pres- 
ent we wish to call attention to it only so that it 
will be in mind. The fact that the materialists 
were first upon the field of scientific discovery and 
so were the first to make use of the data discov- 
ered has naturally created the impression that this 
data favours unbelief. But he is ill-informed who 
still labours under the impression that materialism 
holds the thinking mind of to-day. Twenty years 


44 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


ago pure materialism was abandoned by the lead- 
ing thinkers; and from that time to the present 
every modification of its fundamental principle of 
universal mechanism has met the same fate. It 
takes no great prophet to predict that the next 
twenty years are going to witness as radical a 
revolution in the realm of religious thought as 
has been experienced during the last century. And 
this change is not going to be reactionary in its 
nature, nor is it going to be in opposition to re- 
ligion. It will be a new point of view growing 
directly out of the scientific progress which has 
been gained; and it will include and conserve all 
the assured results of this great era of seeking and 
finding. The tidal wave of new scientific knowl- 
edge which swept over this modern world, natu- 
rally swamped religious thinkers as it did all other 
thinkers. But religious thinkers are getting their 
intellectual footing in this new scientific world and 
are ready to make sure intellectual and spiritual 
progress. Biology, medicine and psychology, the 
principal offenders against religious belief, are al- 
ready beginning to show signs of repentance, and 
are ready to make amends for the havoc they 
have wrought with religious faith. Before we 
have finished our study we shall find them con- 
spicuous among the reconstructive sciences. The 
intellectual horizon of the historic Christian world 
has not been as radiant with light and hope for a 
hundred years. At a time when the biological 
science of evolution, when medical science, when 
psychology, and modern philosophy are all turn- 
ing back to religion, it is not the psychological 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 45 


moment to stress superior knowledge of these 
sciences as the sure foundation of unbelief. 

For centuries it has been a common practice to 
lay all the responsibility for unbelief upon the un- 
reasonableness of beliefs, or upon the incorrect 
interpretation of these beliefs, upon the creeds and 
confessions of faith, or upon the preachers and 
teachers. The sole remedy for unbelief was to 
make the creeds reasonable and the interpretations 
modern and acceptable. Psychology has intro- 
duced another important factor into the problem 
of unbelief. It is the unbeliever. Three elements 
enter into unbelief; either one of which has the 
power to turn the will-to-believe for or against any 
belief. They are: The belief, the interpreter, the 
believer. Gross unreasonableness, logical incon- 
sistency, scientific misstatements, philosophical de- 
fects, naturally make any religious belief untenable 
for the educated. Incorrect interpretation, wrest- 
ing words out of their true meaning, insistence 
upon archaic adaptations, tend to make religious 
truth useless. But it is equally true that many 
times the attitude of the believer, his prejudices, 
his special interests, his training, have as much to 
do with his unbelief as either of these other fac- 
tors. The exact percentage of unbelief which is 
due to the nature of the belief or the interpreta- 
tion, and that which is due to the nature of the 
unbeliever, is an interesting psychological study. 
In acute unbelief, the percentages vary widely; 
sometimes the balance turns against the belief, 
sometimes against the interpreter, sometimes 
against the unbeliever. In acute unbelief it would 


46 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


seem that the majority of cases can be traced to 
the interpreter either in the home, the Sunday 
school, the pulpit or the college class room. In 
chronic unbelief by far the largest proportion of 
cases can be traced to the nature of the unbeliever. 
Therefore, this phase of the problem will claim our 
attention. The age must be weary of criticising 
creeds and preachers by this time; it will be a 
change at least to turn our critical study upon the 
third and most neglected factor in the problem of 
unbelief—the unbeliever. 

In a poem entitled Credo, Richard Watson 
Gilder dramatically phrases the psychological 
phase of our problem thus: 


How easily my neighbour chants his creed 

Kneeling beside me in the House of God. 

His “I believe ”’ he chants, and “I believe,” 

With cheerful iteration and consent— 

Watching meantime the white, slow sunbeam move 

Across the aisle, or listening to the bird 

Whose free, wild song sounds through the open 
door. 


Thou God supreme—I too, I too, believe! 

But O, forgive, if this one human word, 

Binding the deep and breathless thought of Thee 
And my own conscience with an iron band, 
Stick in my throat. I cannot say it, thus— 

This “TI believe,” that doth Thyself obscure. 


Any adolescent who, during an attack of acute 
unbelief, finds the words “TI believe” sticking in 
his throat, may be readily forgiven. ‘This is sim- 
ply one of the sympathetic symptoms of the 
malady. Most of us have had touches of it some 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 47 


time or other. But when the difficulty increases 
with the years and becomes aggravated with age, 
it is a sure symptom of chronic unbelief. It as- 
sumes an alarming stage when it encourages an 
adult to indulge the idea that a vague, undefined, 
nebulous, religious belief which shrinks from 
verbal expression, is superior intellectually and 
spiritually to one which binds the deep and breath- 
less thought of God in the clear concept of an ex- 
pressed idea. Reluctance to express in words 
one’s religious belief is a virtual confession that 
one secretly fears that this faith will not fare well 
in the open. As we shall see in our later studies, 
this desire to keep one’s religious faith in some 
secret place is a characteristic feature of occultism 
and super-beliefs. And of all persons, the rational- 
ist and chronic unbeliever do not suspect that they 
hold anything in common with this class. 

When the words “I believe” grow more and 
more difficult for the adult to say, a pathological 
condition is developing which needs attention. 
The physician occasionally encounters a person 
who has great difficulty in swallowing a pill which 
the majority of normal patients swallow without it 
sticking in their throats. In such a case the physi- 
cian does not lay the trouble to the pill but to the 
patient. In the same way, when the psychologist 
finds here and there a chronic unbeliever who can- 
not say “I believe”? when kneeling in the house 
of God beside an equally intelligent and sincere 
neighbour who finds no difficulty in repeating those 
words with the majority of worshippers, he is in- 
clined to lay the trouble, not to the belief, but to 


48 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


the unbeliever. For he has discovered that the 
imagination has a strange way of erecting inhibi- 
tions which abnormally exaggerate the difficulty 
of swallowing pills and making “I believe” stick 
in the throat of unbelievers. 

Our first step then is to make a diagnosis of the 
psychological nature of the chronic unbeliever. As 
we become better acquainted with him we discover 
that religious belief is not the only thing the chronic 
unbeliever finds it difficult to approve. On general 
principles he is constitutionally opposed to those 
things which the majority favour and for those 
that the majority oppose. He can be counted on 
to run true to form on every great issue. He 
nourishes the conceit that he is superior to the 
average person, therefore he must be different. 
This disposition can invariably be traced to some 
early childhood kink in temperament which was 
not successfully ironed out by discipline. It is a 
legacy bequeathed by the home atmosphere where 
some maladjustment, continuing throughout the 
years of childhood and youth, left a trauma, or 
life-wound in the sensitive psychological nature of 
the child around which a complex has developed. 
Tinge this with continued irritation and emotional 
hostility and you have a psychological complex 
capable of working real disturbance in the intel- 
lectual life of a person. It only takes one or two 
wrong decisions at critical periods in the growing 
life of a child to set this complex in control. And 
if one will take the pains to study any chronic 
unbeliever it will soon become apparent where 
these decisions have been made. Sometimes they 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 49 


have been moral decisions, sometimes falling into 
sin, sometimes simply refusal to go to Sunday 
school when commanded by parents, sometimes 
refusal to go to church, sometimes it has been 
refusal to unite with the church when the ma- 
jority of one’s companions have united. Any one 
of a hundred wrong or different decisions is suf- 
ficient to set up the disturbance of such a complex. 

This is true in the case of quite ordinary persons. 
When dealing with those who are gifted beyond 
the ordinary, the reactions are certain to be more 
extreme. Naturally one’s reactions are most vio- 
lent at the point where the dominant life-interest 
or maladjustment is touched. If this has been the 
religion of the home, you will find such a person 
reacting against churches and creeds. Most 
chronic unbelievers expend their aggressive an- 
tagonisms against a single interest. Once in a 
while there arise iconoclasts of the major order 
like Brann and H. G. Wells, whose versatility en- 
ables them to take a turn at attacking every well- 
established institution and tradition of society. 
With such, their religious unbelief is only an ele- 
ment in their nonconformity of spirit. 

As H. G. Wells is the best known living example 
of this type of chronic unbeliever we will study 
him. The English have made no secret of the 
annoyance which Mr. Wells’ constitutional oppo- 
sition to every patriotic interest of the British 
Empire has caused them. His fellow-countryman, 
Henry Arthur Jones, has gathered up and ex- 
pressed this feeling in his book entitled My Dear 
Wells. We says: 


680 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


We have among us a group of thinkers and writ- 
ers whom I call “ The Haters of England.” They 
always “think” against their own country. If there 
is a sedition and a revolt in any part of the Empire, 
they stir it up. If there is trouble and unrest at 
home, they foment it. . . . During the war they 
were worth many army corps to Germany. Now that 
the war has left us a legacy of new insecurities and 
perils, now that it is a first necessity that our nation 
should gather itself in one great unity of aim and 
effort to ward off disaster, these haters of England are 
busy spreading disaffection and disunion both in our 
internal and in our foreign affairs. 


This general arraignment of the “ Haters of 
England” Mr. Arthur Jones concludes with this 
specific charge: “Mr. Wells is one of the most 
popular and influential of these thinkers and writ- 
ers who think and write against England” (p. 
Vi, 

Those familiar with Mr. Wells’ writings do not 
wonder that one of his own patriotic fellow- 
countrymen has been forced to protest against his 
disloyalty. One need only read the book from 
which we have quoted to be convinced of the con- 
stitutional kink in temperament which makes Mr. 
Wells a typical chronic unbeliever. We in 
America are not disturbed with his general icono- 
clastic attitude, but we are interested in his religious 
beliefs. Those who have read Mr. Britling Sees 
It Through, God the Invisible King, The Soul of a 
Bishop, and The Outlines of History are well 
enough acquainted with his general point of view 
to follow this study. 

The readers of his Outlines of History have 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 51 


been impressed with his colossal attempt to cover 
the whole range of knowledge with one theory of 
interpretation. But those who have taken the 
pains to supplement this reading with a study of 
the mass of literature which has grown up around 
this work, have discovered that in each department 
of knowledge the real experts find his presentation _ 
of their particular branch of science or knowledge 
most unsatisfactory. The department of religion 
is no exception. ‘Those familiar with the assured 
results of Biblical and historical criticism find very 
few of his statements supported by the consensus 
of competent scholars. In the place of the find- 
ings of these sane and recognized experts, he un- 
hesitatingly sets down the wild fancies of his 
superficial opinions. And as the majority of his 
readers know less about these matters than even 
Mr. Wells himself, they are disposed to accept his 
statements as authoritative. The harm wrought 
by this mass of unreliable information is intensi- 
fied by the fact that for the great majority of those 
who read his works, this is their first introduction 
to any kind of a critical study of the Bible and the 
beginnings of Christianity. So that all of his 
statements come with the force of a new revelation 
of truth. And being found in the midst of such 
an overwhelming mass of information upon every 
conceivable subject, the uninformed are disposed 
to accept them as reliable. We do not question 
Mr. Wells’ sincerity, most chronic unbelievers are 
sincere, yet we cannot help wondering what quali- 
fications entitle him to leadership in the depart- 
ment of Biblical scholarship and theology? Why 


52 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


should his hastily formed opinions be accepted as 
authoritative when they run counter to the assured 
findings of scholarly experts who have spent a 
lifetime in accurate and sympathetic study of these 
subjects? 

Before accepting Mr. Wells as an authority in 
this department of knowledge, the reader should 
bear in mind that his whole religious experience 
has been pronouncedly erratic and abnormal. We 
will let him tell his own story. In God the Invis- 
ible King, he calls our attention to the fact that 
many children in childhood have their tender re- 
ligious natures permanently injured by what he 
styles as “nursemaid” teaching concerning God. 
He puts it this way: “Many minds never rise 
again from their injury. They remain for the rest 
of life spiritually crippled and debased.” 

This general observation he concludes with this 
personal confession: 


I, who write, was so set against God, thus rendered. 
He and his Hell were the nightmare of my childhood; 
I hated him while I still believed in him, and who 
could help but hate? I thought of him as a fantastic 
monster, perpetually spying, perpetually listening, 
perpetually waiting to condemn and to “strike me 
dead ”’; his flames as ready as a grill-room fire. . . . 
When I was still only a child of thirteen, by the grace 
of the true God in me, I flung this Lie out of my 
mind, and for many years, until I came to see that 
God himself had done this thing for me, the name of 
God meant nothing to me but the hideous scar in my 
heart where a fearful demon had been (p. 44). 


These quotations acknowledge, so far as Mr. 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF Dd 


Wells is concerned, the existence of the complex 
which we are seeking to show is always in the back- 
ground of the early childhood religious experience 
of the chronic believer. It is not always that we 
are able to uncover this complex, but it is hidden 
away somewhere in the past. Mr. Wells’ child- 
hood reaction to the traditional theology of his day 
was not normal or healthy. He cries out: ‘‘ Who 
could help but hate?” The answer is: The 
normal childish reaction to this very “ nursemaid ” 
teaching concerning God is not hate, but love. 
The great majority of the older generation of the 
most devoted lovers of God were raised upon this 
very theology. It is interesting to recall that even 
such an erratic person as Robert Louis Stevenson 
was brought up upon this very same theology. 
His nursemaid, equally with the one of whom Mr. 
Wells complains, was a staunch Calvinist, and his 
home was very religious. But during his child- 
hood days, Stevenson experienced no violent re- 
action against the religious teaching of his home. 
His childhood religious experience was normal and 
healthy. To be sure, when he entered the univer- 
sity he did become the victim of a very severe 
attack of acute unbelief. This, however, as we 
have shown, was also a perfectly normal and 
healthy adolescent reaction, from which in time he 
recovered, leaving us the splendid legacy of his 
morning and evening prayers and his heroic 
strugele against the ravages of an insidious disease. 

Mr. Wells states that at the early age of thirteen 
he “ flung this Lie” out of his mind. This reveals 
the important fact that it was years before his 


54 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


knowledge of evolution and Biblical and historical 
criticism created any intellectual problems of un- 
belief, that he was the victim of an emotional 
hostility which created a complex in his nature. 
So true was this that he tells us that God meant 
nothing to him for many years but a “ hideous 
scar” in his heart “where a fearful demon had 
been.” It does not take a psychologist to remind 
the reader that those “many years” lived under 
the control of the complex which transformed the 
God-idea into a “ fearful demon,” robbed Mr. 
Wells of the normal religious experiences which 
are indispensable for a sympathetic understanding 
of religion. It took the war with its tremendous 
emotional disturbances to break up this deep- 
seated childhood complex and throw open his mind 
to the elemental facts of religious experience. If 
the war had lasted long enough, and its disturbance 
had been personal enough, Mr. Wells might have 
advanced from a believer in a finite God to a be- 
lief in the God and Father of Jesus Christ. 

Let us now study a typical intellectual chronic 
unbeliever. When Professor Leuba says, “I can- 
not persuade myself that divine personal beings, be 
they primitive gods or the Christian Father, have 
more than a subjective existence” (see A Psy- 
chological Study of Religion, p. 10), he con- 
fesses that he does not believe in the fundamental 
truth upon which historic Christianity is founded 
—belief in a personal God. As we have already 
learned, Professor Leuba has won for himself the 
reputation of being the most outspoken and ag- 
gressive of all the unbelieving psychologists who 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 59 


teach psychology of religion in American colleges. 
Therefore we will select him as a good example of 
the intellectual chronic unbeliever. Where one’s 
career has been scholarly, usually the childhood 
maladjustment has not been as violent as in the 
cases where the early rebellion is moral or spiri- 
tual. Yet in most instances, the homes from which 
aggressive chronic unbelievers come have been 
deeply religious. It isa surprising fact that where 
homes have been irreligious or anti-religious, the 
children generally grow up with an indifferent or 
negative attitude toward the whole subject. They 
are rarely ever aggressive leaders against the 
Church or religious beliefs. Aggressive chronic 
unbelievers come from homes where they have 
failed in childhood successfully to adjust them- 
selves to the imperious demands of the dominant 
home interest—religion. This failure which has 
destroyed the natural harmony of domestic life in 
the home always leaves a sensitive spot in the 
psychological life of the one who has failed to 
make the adjustment. Around this a complex 
develops, and its victim is under the necessity of 
yielding, or justifying a continued unyielding at- 
titude by the process which psychology calls ration- 
alization. Alleged scientific support is one of the 
first resorts in this exigency; another comforting 
support is to be able to convince some other person 
of the reasonableness of your unbelief, thus bol- 
stering up one’s cause by adding recruits. But 
spiritual dissatisfaction and discomfort are in the 
background. 

Whether Professor Leuba’s childhood home was 


56 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


deeply religious or whether it was not, we have not 
been able to ascertain. We do know that his 
family descended from French Huguenots who 
took refuge in Switzerland at the time of the great 
persecutions. In a French Huguenot home 
located in Switzerland, religion was bound to be 
a subject of dominant interest. Into such a home 
Professor Leuba was born. What occasioned the 
complex which set his motived-will-to-think to- 
ward skepticism we do not know. However it 
found plenty of encouragement during the early 
years of his education on the continent of Europe. 
After completing his education in Europe he came 
to America, where he specialized in_ psychol- 
ogy. In 1895 he was a fellow at Clarke Univer- 
sity, Worcester, Massachusetts. Here under the 
guidance of Dr. G. Stanley Hall he studied for 
his degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Those who 
are acquainted with Dr. Hall’s works, especially 
his monumental work entitled Jesus Christ in the 
Light of Psychology, know that this period of 
study could not help but encourage his already 
well-defined attitude of unbelief. One incident 
from this period of his educational career furnishes 
us with the necessary information to illustrate the 
point we are endeavouring to make. 

In 1895 Mr. Charles F. Cutter, then the leader 
of the Old Fulton Street Noonday Prayer Meeting, 
became interested in the subject of religious con- 
version. In order to obtain some reliable scien- 
tific data upon this important subject, he conceived 
the idea of sending out a questionnaire containing 
a number of questions concerning the previous re- 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF ov 


ligious experience of converts. Before his plan 
was put into execution this questionnaire fell into 
the hands of Mr. Leuba of Clarke University, who 
became greatly interested in the project from a 
psychological standpoint. After some correspond- 
ence, Mr. Leuba was taken in to assist Mr. Cutter. 
The questionnaire was duly arranged and circu- 
lated through the press and private correspondence, 
and many answers from people in this country and 
Europe were received. This information, sup- 
plemented by biographies, Mr. Leuba made the 
basis of his degree thesis on Religious Conversion. 
The thesis is a splendid piece of original, critical 
work. It is one of the first efforts made in 
America to subject the phenomena of religious 
experience to the scrutiny of psychological analy- 
sis. And it started a new line of investigation 
into the phenomena of religious experience which 
was soon adopted by others. 

The psychologists were carried away with this 
thesis, but Mr. Cutter did not feel satisfied with 
its conclusions. He had examined all of the re- 
plies which had been received, and he felt that Mr. 
Leuba had not done full justice to the facts which 
the answers to the questionnaire furnished. 
Therefore, as soon as the letters came back into 
his possession, he took a very scholarly friend and 
writer into his confidence and told him of his dis- 
appointment. After some discussion, he turned 
over to this friend all of these letters asking him 
to make a thorough examination of the material 
and write out his analysis and conclusions. The 
friend took the letters expecting to comply with 


58 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


this request, but ill-health lasting many years de- 
feated this project. 

After the appearance in 1912 of Professor 
Leuba’s book, A Psychological Study of Religion, 
we were so amazed at the arbitrary manner in 
which Professor Leuba rejected psychological 
data of great importance, that we wrote a series 
of articles entitled, The Psychologist Among the 
Theologians, and The Theologian Among the 
Psychologists. In these, we called attention to 
this unwarranted rejection of so much important 
data upon the subject of religion. Soon after the 
appearance of these articles, a letter was received 
from the previously mentioned friend of Mr. 
Cutter, telling the story of the questionnaire and 
asking if we would consent to undertake the long 
delayed task of reéxamining this material. The 
upshot of the whole matter is that we now have in 
our possession the original letters upon which Mr. 
Leuba based the conclusions found in his thesis 
on Religious Conversion. At some other time we 
hope to make a study of them. But our examina- 
tion of this data reveals the fact that Professor 
Leuba adopted in this instance the same method 
which characterized his book. All of the data 
used are well analyzed, but the facts left out of 
his calculation are most significant. Some in- 
hibitions clearly biased his selection of material. 
And these inhibitions were operating in the early 
years while he was still a student at Clarke Unt- 
versity. No doubt Professor Leuba honestly be- 
lieves that the conclusions which he states in his 
two recent books A Psychological Study of Re- 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 59 


ligion and The Belief in God and Immortality are 
the inevitable resultants from the knowledge of 
psychology which he has gained during twenty- 
five years of thorough research. But as we shall 
see in a later chapter, every item of his anti- 
theistic and anti-Christian positions is contained in 
his maiden thesis written at Clarke University in 
1895. In other words, he was already an un- 
believer before he began to investigate the psycho- 
logical data of religious experience. And this at- 
titude of unbelief was the dominant factor which 
controlled his selection and rejection of data. 

It must be borne in mind that chronic unbe- 
lievers have keen enough minds, that their reason- 
ing powers are in good working order, that they 
have at their disposal sufficient facts, but they do 
not give all of these facts a chance to function in 
behalf of truth. This is not because they are dis- 
honest, but because some early childhood malad- 
justment has created a complex which is in per- 
petual conspiracy with the motived-will-to-think so 
that selective attention is not impressed with facts 
that are untouched with emotional interest and 
hostilely regarded by inhibitions. And in the case 
of chronic unbelief, these are the very facts which 
count most. ‘Those who are not victims of trau- 
mas and complexes have open minds to receive 
this additional evidence, even when it is presented 
by their opponents. ‘The victims of acute unbelief 
for example eagerly welcome it, but the mind of 
the chronic unbeliever is closed: he cannot see 
their value. For such, facts, logic and reason 
have no force as long as this psychological com- 


60 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


plex is not broken up. Not until some mighty 
emotional experience breaks the grip of this com- 
plex on the motived-will-to-think, and releases it 
so that an emotional interest charges selective at- 
tention with the new task of weighing this evi- 
dence, can the chronic unbeliever be expected to 
change his point of view. Analytical psychology 
is able to furnish valuable assistance at this point. 

No treatment of chronic unbelief is complete 
without a study of the most notorious of all 
chronic unbelievers—Friedrich Nietzsche. The 
World War made us all somewhat familiar with 
his philosophy. Nietzsche was neither a freak 
nor an accident in the intellectual life of Germany. 
He was the direct and legitimate product of his 
natural environment and personality. We regret 
that the limits of this article will not permit us to 
go into this subject more thoroughly. But we can 
sketch its outlines. 

Nietzsche furnishes us with the best example we 
have of the operation of the psychological law of 
reversed effort. True to type, he also comes from 
a very religious home. He descended from a long 
line of ministerial ancestry, his father being a 
Lutheran clergyman. When Nietzsche was a boy 
of five his father died, and his mother took him 
and his sister to Naumburg where all of her family 
lived. There Nietzsche informs us he grew up 
under the petticoat government of his mother and 
aunts. From early childhood Nietzsche was pas- 
sionate, intense, proud, conceited, self-willed, 
supersensitive, eccentric. At first he was also 
deeply religious. This is an important psycho- 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 61 


logical fact. But as he grew to self-consciousness 
and became more independent and self-reliant he 
rebelled against the religious restrictions of his 
home. In time he became too much of a problem 
for his mother and aunts to handle. Their prim, 
precise, pious precepts, principles and practices 
first irritated, then infuriated him. ‘To assist in 
enforcing discipline, they invoked the aid of re- 
ligion, as many helpless parents do, insisting that 
their way is right and that God will punish those 
who do not obey. His natural waywardness and 
this petulant practice made a combination that 
stirred up in him an intense hatred of religion. 

His alert mind soon perceived that if he were to 
have any peace of mind one of two decisions must 
be made. It must either be Thy will, or mine. 
Jesus gained His marvellous peace of mind and 
strength of character by choosing the first alter- 
native. He said: “ Not my will, but thine, be 
done.” Nietzsche determined he would never 
make this choice. From the moment of this de- 
cision, he hated Jesus; His presence taunted and 
haunted him. ‘This early resistance and decision 
formed the nucleus-complex around which de- 
veloped his attitude of emotional hostility toward 
Christianity. Again we pause to call attention to 
the fact that Nietzsche’s unbelief in its inception, 
like all chronic unbelief, was not an intellectual, 
but rather a spiritual and moral problem. Dr. 
Paneth, his faithful friend, has shown that 
Nietzsche always worked from his feelings out- 
ward. We learn, then, that from early childhood 
Nietzsche fought his faith and fostered his doubts. 


62 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


In his student days he came upon Strauss’ Das 
Leben Jesu. From the first paragraph this book 
fascinated him. By its mythical interpretation of 
the Jesus of the Gospels, Strauss brought great re- 
lief to Nietzsche’s troubled mind. ‘The Jesus of 
the Gospels was not a real historic personality he 
learned and this fact lessened the disturbing in- 
fluence of His haunting presence. A little later 
Nietzsche came under the influence of Schleier- 
macher, Ritschl, Voltaire, Wagner. But still he 
found no real peace of mind. Next to Jesus, the 
Church, which nourished His religion, infuriated 
him. In typical Voltairean style he attacked this. 
Here is one passage: 


The Christian Church is to me the greatest of all 
imaginable corruptions ; it has the will to the ultimate 
corruption that is possible. The Christian Church has 
left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made 
a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every 
truth, a baseness of soul out of every straightforward- 
ness (Antichrist, sect. 62, quoted in The Will to Free- 
dom, by Figgis, p. 6). 


Calling Zarathustra to his aid, he sends him 
forth to preach and teach. Zarathustra is the 
antichrist who closely parallels the Jesus of the 
Gospels, only he always teaches opposite life- 
principles. It is impossible in such a short sketch 
to give any adequate idea of Nietzsche’s vehement 
opposition to the teaching of Jesus which he puts 
into the lips of Zarathustra. ‘Two short quota- 
tions will help to convey some idea of its general 
character. In one passage he says: 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 63 


I call Christianity the one great curse, the one 
great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of 
revenge, for which no expedient is sufficiently poison- 
ous, secret, subterranean, mean—lI call it the one im- 
mortal blemish of mankind (Quoted by Figgis, Op. 
cit., p. 104). 


In another place he exclaims: 


That which deifies me, that which makes me stand 
apart from the whole of the rest of humanity, is the 
fact that I have unmasked Christian morality 
(Quoted by Figgis, Op. cit., p. 105). 

Volume after volume rolls from his pen reeking 
with anathemas against the Church, Jesus Christ, 
and Christianity. In the background of all of his 
writing is plainly evident his desire to be free from 
the obligations and restraints of religion. Zara- 
thustra is his ideal, and Zarathustra is free. He 
is free because he is ungodly. Again and again 
he insists that nothing is to be gained by being 
free from belief in God if one still remains in the 
prison-house of an ethical system which is de- 
rived from belief in God. His ideal group in 
society he portrays as those who are “ Beyond 
Good and Evil.” These are free indeed. Inci- 
dentally he taught that rulers belong to this class, 
and the ex-Kaiser believed him. All of this grow- 
ing out of his early failure successfully to adjust 
himself to the religious demands of his home and 
church. But never for one moment was this man, 
whose early childhood had been deeply religious, 
able to escape the haunting presence of the Jesus 
whose life-philosophy he rejected. Jesus’ response 
to the challenge of Calvary was: “ Not my will, 


64 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


but thine, be done.” And He preached an ideal 
Kingdom of God in which by that response to God 
the individual becomes so socialized that he loves 
God and his neighbour. Nietzsche responded to 
the little challenge of childhood obedience in the 
home with the reaction: Not Thy will, but mine, 
be done. And he preached the doctrine of the 
superman who, to become the beast and monster 
(these are Nietzsche’s own words) necessary to 
attain to the ideal superman, has to accept the fact 
that he must hate both God and his neighbour. 
The life of each is the real answer to the value of 
his philosophy of life. That of Jesus is recorded 
in the Gospels. 

Nietzsche attempted the impossible—and the 
struggle was too great for him. Everything in his 
life went to smash. His married life, his home, 
his friendships, his career, his health, his mind. 
By the time he was forty-five his mind breaks and 
he goes to an insane asylum. His good physician 
endeavours to convince the world that his eyes 
caused his insanity, but the psychologist now 
knows too much about this type of insanity to 
ignore the psychological causes which contributed 
toward this end. Here are some of the items 
which must not be overlooked: All through his 
life Nietzsche played false with God’s great gifts 
to him—a brilliant mind and a Christian heritage. 
Instead of using his unusual mind in the service of 
God and truth, he perverted it in an effort to de- 
stroy God and the truth. With consummate con- 
ceit he exclaims, ‘That which deifies me,” as 
though he had attained to the rank of deity. 


CHRONIC UNBELIEF 65 


In another passage he makes Zarathustra exclaim: 
“Tf there be a God, how could I bear not to be 
one?” In those words you have the essence of 
his challenge to God in defying His Will. From 
early childhood he poured all the energy of his 
soul and the brilliance of his mind into the futile 
attempt to make the reasonable unreasonable, and 
the unreasonable reasonable; to make good evil, 
and evil good; to make error truth, and truth 
error; to put light for darkness, and darkness for 
light; and the woe of the prophet, who was a good 
psychologist, fell upon him. 

In other words, he fought against elemental 
reality and truth; and in the last analysis, this 1s 
madness. It is the essence of atheism. The thing 
that saves most chronic unbelievers from 
Nietzsche’s fate is the simple fact that they do not 
take their unbelief so seriously. In the case of 
H. G. Wells and in that of Professor Leuba, their 
complex affects only their intellectual attitude 
toward the beliefs of historic Christianity. In the 
moral and psychological realms, inhibitions were 
encountered which obstructed its further invasion 
of their lives. In Nietzsche’s case he allowed his 
unbelief free range through his intellectual, moral, 
and spiritual life. When once unbelief gets such 
a full right of way through personality its true 
nature becomes revealed. 

It is a wholesome practice to examine one’s 
chronic intellectual hostility to certain religious 
beliefs and the Church. Destructive complexes 
have their origin in personal elements. Personal 
pride, personal stubbornness, personal conceit, per- 


66 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


sonal sensitiveness, personal jealousies, personal 
animosities, personal ambitions, these are factors 
which need close watching. ‘They are able to turn 
great crises and little decisions into complexes 
around which life attitudes will develop and be- 
come set. When reduced to the last analysis self 
still remains the old problem. ‘This is important 
to bear in mind when we come in a later chapter 
to consider the cure for chronic unbelief. 

No doubt as this study has been progressing 
some have been wondering whether this complex 
idea cannot be worked both ways? Does it not 
become the cause of belief as well as unbelief? 
This question is right to the point. And we 
frankly confess that believers are no more free 
from suspicion of complex control than unbe- 
lievers. Our psychological natures are no respect- 
ers of complexes. They can be turned for or 
against belief with equal ease. In the one case we 
get chronic unbelievers, in the other, super-be- 
lievers. When any Christian, or minority group, 
establishes a sect around some peculiar doctrine 
upon which other equally intelligent and sincere 
Christians differ, the danger of a complex control 
is acute. A religious complex usually can be 
recognized by the fact that it invariably makes an 
exaggerated individualistic appeal quite out of 
harmony with the real spirit and ideals of Jesus, 
such as an appeal to self-conceit, self-flattery, self- 
interest, pride, personal ambition, etc., and is 
always a small minority affair. In other words, 
it never attains majority control, so it is not a 
normal religious experience. 


PART II 


SUPER-BELIEF OR MISBELIEF 










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III 
OCCULTISM 


‘ ) } FE, now enter the second divisional area 
of our subject—super-belief or misbe- 
lief. The pendulum of the human will- 
to-believe has within its range the capacity to swing 
from the one extreme of the stub-belief of atheism 
to the super-belief of occultism. We would like to 
distinguish these extremes by defining sub-believers 
as those who believe less than the truth, and super- 
believers as those who believe more than the truth. 
But to avoid starting a fruitless discussion over, 
“What is truth?” we will put our proposition 
thus: Sub-believers are those who believe less than 
normal, and super-believers are those who believe 
more than normal. It is not necessary to stop at 
this point to define what is meant by normal re- 
ligious belief, for that is the subject of our next 
division. 

As sub-belief has a psychological cause, so also 
has super-belief. This overplus of belief is 
always a gratuitous contribution made by the im- 
agination to compensate for some shortage of 
spiritual satisfaction in real-life experiences. As 
acute unbelief springs out of the problems of the 
adolescent period, and chronic unbelief out of 
early childhood experiences, coming to expression 
and control in early adult life, so super-belief 
springs out of the complexes of middle life. For 
middle life has its critical problems as well as 

69 


70 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


childhood and youth. Until recently the Church 
has been so concerned with the problems of early 
life that it has sorely neglected those of middle 
life. The novelists were the first to shift the 
scene of their plots from the pre-marriage stage to 
that of domestic problems in the home. For a 
number of years they have been featuring the 
crises of the “ dangerous forties.” Then, spiritual 
healers and the psychoanalysts revealed the root 
of the trouble. 

Middle life has suddenly taken on new impor- 
tance. It is the period in which we reap what we 
have sown as individuals, in the physical, moral, 
spiritual, social, intellectual and psychological de- 
partments of our lives. And the harvest is usually 
an awakening surprise. Another figure may help 
to make this subject a little clearer. From 
twenty-five to forty most of us give little heed to 
the fact that we are spending more in each of these 
departments of our personality than we are earn- 
ing. Asa result, while we are at the very height 
of our efficiency, and our earning capacity is at 
its best, we thoughtlessly tap the reserves which we 
have stored up in childhood and youth for old age, 
and thus eke out the deficits which daily accumu- 
late in our physical, moral, spiritual and psycholog- 
ical income. And each department of personality 
runs a separate bank account. It is quite impos- 
sible to continue indefinitely spending more than is 
' earned, without some day facing the conse- 
quences. Rudyard Kipling writes of the “ unfor- 
giving minute.” In a certain sense, every minute 
of every day is unforgiving. Nature is long- 


OCCULTISM 71 


suffering, but unrelenting and honest. She holds 
us to strict account for all of our prodigality and 
improvidence. She tests our thrift. 

Middle life seems to be the time set by her for 
straightening out her long-running accounts. 
When some of these demands are pressed, many 
middle-lifers are forced into bankruptcy. Some 
fail physically, some morally, some spiritually, 
some socially, some intellectually, some psycholog- 
ically. Medical science lays most of the break- 
downs in middle life which bankrupt health to 
neglect of the laws of health. Their slogan is: 
“Keep physically fit.’ They recommend the 
““oym’” and exercise. Moral, spiritual and psy- 
chological breakdowns are due to religious indif- 
ference, neglect of the laws of moral and spiritual 
health. Keep morally and spiritually fit is the 
slogan of psychology. And the day is not far 
distant when this science will recommend the 
Church and religious experience. The reasons 
will soon be obvious. 

Middle life is a peculiarly critical period for 
woman. It demands of her many very radical ad- 
justments. Some of these are well known. We 
wish to call your attention to some that are seldom 
recognized. Take the psychological one. It is at 
this time of life that the children in the home who 
have required so much of her heart, head and 
hands begin to slip away one by one to college, 
business, to homes of their own; and the mother 
finds life strangely empty and lonely. At this 
trying period, when the husband should be the 
one to rise to the emergency and supply some of 


72 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


the sorely needed affection, sympathy, interest and 
companionship, which are so necessary to make up 
for these heavy losses, he has become such a set 
middle-lifer that he is psychologically incapable of 
rising to the occasion. ‘To add to this deficiency, 
he has allowed himself to become so opinionated 
that congenial conversation with his wife upon any 
vital topic is quite impossible. No subject is 
really open for discussion with him in his own 
home. Then, he has accumulated a surprising 
number of annoying habits, disturbing peculiari- 
ties, odd idiosyncrasies, none of which appeared 
during courting days, which, combined with his 
other deficiencies, make his contribution to the do- 
mestic situation of middle life something of a 
spiritual and psychological liability rather than an 
asset. 

Where women have never married, other prob- 
lems arise in their spiritual and psychological lives 
which are equally difficult. Then, middle life has 
its general harvest of failures; disappointments, sor- 
rows, accidents, misfortunes, sicknesses, declining 
powers and declining attractiveness, separations, 
deaths, to heap upon the already heavily burdened 
human spirit their increase of perplexities and de- 
mands. All of these, woman’s sensitive nature 
feels much more intensely than the average man. 
That the normal woman bears up so heroically and 
complains so little is evidence of her amazing 
moral, spiritual and psychological strength of 
character. That she needs spiritual help to meet 
these massing problems of middle life, needs no 
proof. The fact that we have featured the middle 


OCCULTISM 73 


life problems of women does not imply that men 
in any way are exempt. They have their full 
share. 

To return to our financial figure. If you have 
been thrifty during the years from twenty-five to 
forty, physically, morally, and spiritually, as well 
as economically, and earned enough to meet all of 
the necessary demands made by life along these 
lines, and laid aside a little for “ rainy days” and 
old age, nature’s collector will have no terrors for 
you. ‘The climacteric period of middle life will 
be passed without difficulty, and will usher in the 
comfortable period of enjoyment of a well-earned 
competency. But if you have been a prodigal, 
wasting your portion of the inheritance in riotous 
living, you will be unable to settle with nature’s 
collector, when he comes around, as he surely will, 
demanding the settlement of your long running ac- 
count. You may think that you can dodge him, 
but this cannot be done. He comes in the guise of 
acute or chronic illness to the physical bankrupt, 
as domestic disaster to the psychological bankrupt, 
as the wages of sin to the moral bankrupt, as tragic 
sorrow, crushing disillusionment, irritating per- 
sonal neglect, or some blow of this nature from 
which recovery is not experienced in a normal 
manner, to the spiritual bankrupt. In many cases, 
nature’s collector does not come as an exceptional 
crisis, but as the slow, wasting pangs of a famish- 
ing soul, which long indifference to religion has 
left ravenously hungry for spiritual food. It is 
this unnatural shortage in one or more of these 
departments of personality which stimulates the 


74 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


middle-lifer to speculate in the super-beliefs of oc- 
cultism. 

Why? Because the occult world is enshrouded 
with mystery, peopled with super-normal beings, 
and rationalized by super-beliefs. The word 
means, hidden, covered, concealed. Ghosts, spirits, 
witches, magicians, medicine-men, astrologers, 
alchemists, clairvoyants, mediums, and a host of 
super-normal or psychic beings people this realm, 
and make it an uncanny place to tarry. But there 
is nothing to be feared in it but the dark of its 
occult corner. And when the light has been | 
thrown into this by a knowledge of its hidden 
mysteries, even this loses its terrors. It will en- 
courage the reader to recall that the progress of 
human knowledge has already greatly reduced the 
territory over which the occult originally held 
sway. Only a few refined varieties of this pseudo- 
science and religion remain to throw their fas- 
cinating spell over the minds of certain types of 
people. Let us fearlessly face these spectres of 
the mind, and, if possible, lay them one by one, so 
that a stronger faith may become our own... 

The monotheism of the Bible was the first 
rational religious faith to invade the domains of 
the occult and wage relentless war against its pur- 
veyors of super-beliefs and superstitions. Cen- 
turies before modern science uttered its first word 
along this line, the Bible taught that this is a 
rational universe, created and ruled by a Personal 
God who is rational, intelligent, holy, just, true 
and loving. From the loins of this sublime truth, 
modern science in due time came forth. It is a 


OCCULTISM 79 


wise science that knows its own mother. The 
prolonged conflict between science and religion has 
been kept alive by the prolific offspring of special 
sciences. ach new science has to grow up. 
During this process it has to pass through the try- 
ing adolescent period. Naturally it struggles to 
escape from the grip of the infantile complex into 
self-respecting, independent individuality. The 
mother of these sciences—monotheism—and their 
father—philosophy—have to be subjected to the 
rebellion against parental authority, which is char- 
acteristic of this developing period. Why can we 
not recognize these adolescent revolts? It is not 
science, but only the young growing sciences, 
which keep up this perpetual warfare between 
science and religion. 

Fach special science has to have its fling at mono- 
theism as well as at philosophy. But it is well for 
those who are unduly excited over the present agi- 
tation within the Church over this conflict between 
science and faith to realize the cause, and exercise 
a generous amount of patience and tact. For as 
each special science comes to full maturity it out- 
grows this adolescent spirit of conceit and rebel- 
lion, and as fast as its exaggerated egoism sub- 
sides, it settles down into a perfectly harmonious 
and useful member of the domestic family circle 
of truth. Why become disturbed if biology, psy- 
chology and medical science, the youngsters in the 
family of special sciences, have still not passed 
out of the adolescent period? Give them time, 
they will recover. And when they do grow up, 
mother and father,—monotheism and philosophy, 


76 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


—will also be under obligation to recognize this 
fact, and give them the place and portion of the 
estate of knowledge to which they are the rightful 
heirs. When these grown-up responsibilities are 
properly readjusted, domestic friction at this point 
will be reduced to a minimum. 

Naturally occultism, that strange combination of 
pseudo-science and pseudo-religion,—by nature 
the common foe of both science and religion,— 
loses no chance to make the most of these little 
domestic differences in the family circle of truth. 
For it is always in those periods in which these dif- 
ferences are causing the most friction, that oc- 
cultism and super-beliefs thrive. Spiritism, Mor- 
monism, New Thought, Christian Science, The- 
osophy, were all born in such a period of conflict 
during the nineteenth century. Therefore it 
should surprise no one to find them enjoying a 
revival under similar conditions at the present 
time. All super-believers are victims in some form 
of the religio-scientific complex. Their limited 
knowledge of science or religion, or both, makes it 
impossible for them, in the hour of their great 
spiritual need, to develop sufficient faith either in 
science or religion to help them out of their trou- 
ble. Because of this serious dilemma, the sci- 
entific way to chronic unbelief, with which we will 
become familiar in the chapter on Belief in a Per- 
sonal God, and the way to normal religious belief, 
are both effectually closed to them. Yet they are 
in dire need of spiritual help, and they now realize 
this, and they must have some scientific theory or 
philosophy of life which will make them feel at 


OCCULTISM. va 


home in this material universe. Here occultism 
finds its opportunity. It outflanks both science and 
religion by offering the benefits of both, entirely 
independent of the knowledge of modern science, 
philosophy or normal religion. Every super-belief 
cult opens up a newly-discovered private right of 
way to truth without the normal demand of acquir- 
ing knowledge through the laborious process of 
education; and a private line of communication 
with the Divine for which the founder of the cult 
has obtained by special revelation an exclusive and 
perpetual franchise. Truth cannot be reached by 
any detour. An examination of a few typical 
super-belief cults will make these characteristics 
plain. 

Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy is careful to in- 
form us that she did not obtain the truth of Chris- 
tian Science by any of the natural, human processes 
of acquiring scientific knowledge or religious truth. 
She says: 


No human pen nor tongue taught me the Science 
contained in this book Science and Health (Science 
and Health, p. 110). 


In another place she says: 


I should blush to write of “Science and Health 
with Key to the Scriptures’”’ as I have, were it of 
human origin and I, apart from God, its author 
(Quoted from Religion-Medical Masquerade, p. 57). 


It is her claim that the fundamental truth of 
Christian Science was miraculously revealed to 
her by God. The details of this revelation will be 


78 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


found discussed in The Non-Sense of Christian 
Science, in the chapter on Non-Sense Revelations. 
Her qualifications for receiving this great revela- 
tion direct from God, she thus explains: 


God has been graciously preparing me during many 
years for the reception of this final revelation of the 
absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing 
(Science and Health, p. 107). 


How she had been preparing herself for the pub- 
lication of Science and Health we have shown. In 
attempting to teach her system, three great ob- 
stacles were encountered. The Bible and normal 
religious belief, the testimony of the physical 
senses, the facts of science and the human reason. 
All of these normal regulators of truth and de- 
fenses against the inroads of error flatly contra- 
dicted the fundamental principles of her science. 
Therefore they must in some way be overthrown. 
The religious teaching of the Bible she renders 
inoffensive, by throwing away the old key of 
knowledge and sensible interpretation of the plain 
meaning of the Scripture text which Protestantism 
placed in the hand of every individual, and sub- 
stituting for this a new key of “ spiritual interpre- 
tation,” which she keeps in her own hands. No 
one can understand the teaching of the Bible with- 
out first obtaining this key from her. How suc- 
cessful she is in eliminating normal religious belief 
from her pathway, I have shown in the chapters 
on Non-Sense and the Bible and Non-Sense 
Christianity. 

When she encounters the opposition of the 


OCCULTISM 79 


physical senses and the human reason, she adopts 
other tactics. She sweeps them aside by denying 
their right to bear testimony concerning the truth. 
Here is one statement: 


The five physical senses are the avenues and in- 
struments of human error (Science and Health, p. 


293). 
In another place, she writes: 


Corporeal sense defrauds and lies: it breaks all the 
commands of the Mosaic decalogue to meet its de- 
mands (Science and Health, p. 489). 


“Divine Truth” as it is found in Science and 
Health is exactly opposite to human truth. Upon 
this point Mrs. Eddy says: 


Divine Science reverses the false testimony of the 
material senses, and thus tears away the foundations 
of error. Hence the enmity between Science and the 
senses (Science and Health, p. 273). 


To make this point doubly clear she says: 


We cannot . . . perceive divine Science with 
the material senses (Science and Health, p. 167). 


The first essential for perceiving the “ Divine 
Truth” as it is in Christian Science is: “ Relin- 
quish all theories based upon sense perception 
(Science and Health, p. 249). ‘There is no dis- 
puting Mrs. Eddy’s statement that her “ divine 
science”? cannot be perceived by the aid of the 
material senses and the human reason. One does 
not have to read far in Science and Health to be 


80 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


convinced of this truth. ‘The normal human being 
feels somewhat handicapped in starting out in the 
search for truth without the use of the physical 
senses, scientific knowledge already gained, and 
human reason. But those who are searching for 
the truth as it is in Christian Science experience 
no handicap from this cause. For they are en- 
dowed with a specially developed spiritual sense 
which operates quite independently of these nor- 
mal instruments of human personality, and they 
are furnished with a world in which none of these 
instruments for acquiring knowledge are needed. 
Mrs. Eddy says: 


According to Christian Science the only real senses 
of man are spiritual, emanating from Divine Mind. 
Thought passes from God to man, but neither sensa- 
tion nor report goes from material body to mind. The 
intercommunication is always from God to His idea, 
man (Science and Health, p. 284). 


This sixth spiritual sense and the personality in 
which “thought passes from God to man” with- 
out sensation or report going through the material 
body to Mind, are both the exclusive products of 
Mrs. Eddy’s non-sense world. We call it non- 
sense because Mrs. Eddy specially rejects all the 
testimony of the senses. ‘Therefore her world 
indeed is a non-sense world. Our interest at this 
time is to acquaint the reader with a typical pseudo- 
science, pseudo-religious cult. All occultism 
partakes of the same nature. ‘The testimony 
of the senses, all normal human knowledge, 
and the logical functioning of the human rea- 


OCCULTISM 81 


son are equally discredited. In their place “ Di- 
vine Truth’’—never the human variety—is re- 
ceived direct from God. It will be interesting 
to note how every super-belief cult resorts to 
the same strategy to elude the destructive in- 
fluence of the facts of science, rational religious 
belief, and the indisputable testimony of the physi- 
cal senses. Let us take a hasty glance at another 
super-belief cult to check this up. 

New Thought. New Thought followers will be 
surprised to find their cult grouped among the 
occult super-belief cults. For they always aspire 
to teach a practical, sensible system of mental heal- 
ing. And in this respect it is a great improvement 
upon Christian Science. One of its ablest expo- 
nents is Horatio W. Dresser, author of a number 
of books upon this subject. In his late work, 
Spiritual Health and Healing, the whole modern 
theory is given. Originally New Thought taught 
mental healing exactly as does Mrs. Eddy in her 
chapter on Recapitulation. For Mrs. Eddy, Rev. 
Warren F. Evans, and Julius A. Dresser, the 
father of Horatio W. Dresser, were all at the same 
time patients and pupils of P. P. Quimby from 
whom they obtained their system of mental heal- 
ing. The rapid strides which Christian Science, 
the younger sister, made in the spread of its idea 
of mental healing after Mrs. Eddy established her 
church and made a religion out of it, forced the 
New Thought Movement of Dresser and Evans, 
though earlier upon the field, to switch back to 
the older idea of spiritual healing which Andrew 
Jackson Davis had made so famous twenty-five 


82 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


years before. So that to-day in spite of its name 
“New Thought,” this movement stresses spiritual: 
healing as greatly superior to any system of 
mental healing. 

Mrs. Eddy’s rash denial of the existence of 
matter, sin, sickness and death, led the New 
Thought followers to endeavour to avoid these 
much-criticised points in Christian Science, and 
forced them to seek for some more rational and 
acceptable method of harmonizing the conflicts be- 
tween mind and matter in a system of mental 
healing. Horatio W. Dresser in Spiritual Health 
and Healing, gives us the very latest solution of 
this problem. He says: 


There is a discrete difference between spiritual and 
natural things. There is no interfusing or blending 


(piitO2 )i 


This makes interaction impossible. The next 
important fact is this: 


All power is in spiritual life, . . . there is no 
rival power (p. 103). 


Naturally then: 


We . . . look to the spiritual realm as the 
basis of causality, the one ultimate source of energy 
(p. 276). 


All of this leads to the conclusion that “ Real 
causes are spiritual” (p. 162). Up to this point 
everything is perfectly clear. But the problem is 
seriously complicated when Mr. Dresser concludes 
the sentence with this statement: “ Natural events 


OCCULTISM 83 


are effects.” The normal mind finds some diff- 
culty in figuring out how this can be true. If 
there is a discrete difference between spiritual and 
natural things, and “there is no interfusion or 
blending,’ by what bursts of lawlessness are spir- 
- itual causes able to leap the impassable barriers 
of the spiritual realm and produce effects in the 
natural realm? With this larger philosophical 
problem of the relation between mind and matter, 
Mr. Dresser does not concern himself. New 
Thought strictly limits itself to the needs of hu- 
man personality. Its problem is spiritual health 
and healing; and its need is to find a way in which 
omnipotent and omniscient Spirit may gain access 
to human personality so that it can operate di- 
rectly upon the human spirit in preserving health 
and curing disease without the interference of the 
physical body, the material senses, or human rea- 
son. You will notice that this is exactly the same 
problem which confronted Mrs. Eddy in Christian 
Science. Modern New Thought provides a new 
way. 

Of course it is obvious that this cannot take 
place anywhere within the realm of human per- 
sonality where reason presides. So Mr. Dresser 
announces a new psychological discovery. He in- 
forms his readers that there is “in the innermost 
spirit of man” situated beyond the reach of rea- 
son, outside the margin of consciousness, where 
analysis cannot penetrate, a “‘ Secret Place” in 
which the Infinite Spirit comes into conjunction 
with the finite spirit. He says: 


84 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


The secret place is the place for beginning to do 
things. . . . It is the place of conjunction be- 
tween the Divine and the human (p. 245). 


The important point for us to bear in mind is 
that the occult chamber of the New Thought 
Movement is a “ Secret Place”; and it is located 
beyond the reach of reason, outside the margin of 
consciousness, where analysis cannot penetrate. 
Here all the miracles of the cult originate and all 
of its super-beliefs are born. ‘The trouble with this 
theory is that the psychologist knows of no such 
“Secret Place” within human personality. Of 
course if he could discover its whereabouts, it 
would then not be beyond the reach of reason. 
The thing that puzzles us most is: How did the 
New Thoughters ever discover its existence, if it is 
beyond the reach of reason, outside the margin of 
consciousness, where analysis cannot penetrate? 
Is it not true that however attenuated the human 
spirit may become as it enters this secret place in 
the innermost of the spirit of man, it never reaches 
the vanishing point of cognizance? For the very 
instant that the slightest disturbance within the 
realm of thought, feeling and will occurs in human 
personality, it is at that moment well within the 
reach of reason and psychological analysis. This 
secret place of the New Thought philosophy is a 
strong rival for superiority over the occult corner 
in Christian Science where sin, sickness, pain and 
death stealthily steal into human personality, where 
they do not exist, and work such destructive havoc. 
When pressed very hard for an explanation of the 


OCCULTISM 85 


‘ 


presence of these “errors” in the human mind, 
Mrs. Eddy made this answer: 


Delusion, sin, disease and death arise from the 
false testimony of the material sense, which, from a 
supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of 
infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind 
and substance with everything turned upside down 
(Science and Health, p. 301). 


An occult corner located “ outside the focal dis- 
tance of infinite Spirit”? is surely safe from the 
reach of human reason. And when this location is 
only a “supposed standpoint’’ based upon “ the 
false testimony of the material sense’ which pre- 
sents an “inverted image of mind” with “ every- 
thing turned upside down,” it is no wonder that 
the teaching of Christian Science strikes the rea- 
soning mind as absurd. It would be difficult for 
human ingenuity to surpass this description of an 
occult corner. But without it, the Christian Sci- 
ence system of mental healing and its philosophy 
of life become unthinkable. As does the New 
Thought system, without its “ Secret Place in the 
innermost spirit of man.” 

Theosophy. At the present time Theosophy is 
making a strong bid for popularity. Its growth 
in the United States during the last few years has 
been marked. The organization publishes a 
monthly magazine, and a quarterly, both very ably 
edited and surprisingly clever. A new store has 
been opened recently in New York City dispensing 
only Theosophical literature. As its name implies, 
Theosophy means Divine Wisdom,—not the or- 
dinary human kind. By this time this idea begins 


86 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


to sound familiar. Madame Blavatsky, its 
founder, being a Jewess, quite irreligious, with a 
previous career as a prophetess and also as a spir- 
itistic medium, when she conceived the idea of 
starting a cult of her own, felt it necessary to de- 
vise a more practical and concrete way of approach 
to Truth and Reality. Through her marvellous 
psychic powers she discovered an entirely new 
order of superhuman beings called Mahatmas. 
With these Masters she was able to communicate. 
Now it happened that these Mahatmas possessed 
all knowledge and all superhuman power over the 
forces of nature so that they could perform mir- 
acles. It was from them that Madame Blavatsky 
received her knowledge of Divine Wisdom which 
she committed to her book, The Secret Doctrine 
—The Bible of Theosophy. And through their 
superhuman control over the laws of nature, they 
were able to assist her in performing the alleged 
miracles which she wrought in India while estab- 
lishing her new cult. At least this is Madame 
Blavatsky’s claim. Mrs. Besant describes the 
Theosophic Mahatmas as follows: 


A Mahatma was a man living in a human body, 
who in the course of evolution by means of repeated 
incarnations, had reached the highest possible point 
of human perfection—physically, intellectually, and 
morally; a man who had acquired all the powers of 
the human soul and acquired all the knowledge to be 
found on earth—literally a Divine man. Mahatmas 
have always possessed superhuman powers. They 
were able, indeed, to control the powers of nature 
(Quoted from The Theosophic Craze, p. 65). 


OCCULTISM 87 


As Christian Science is dependent upon its oc- 
cult corner, and New Thought upon its “ Secret 
Place,” so Theosophy is dependent upon the exist- 
ence of these super-normal beings called Mahat- 
mas, and the special psychic powers of its founder 
and leaders which enable them to communicate 
with the “ Masters.” Mrs. Besant once said: 

If there are no Mahatmas, the Theosophical Society 
is an Absurdity (Lucifer, Dec. 15, 1890, quoted from 
The Theosopluc Craze, p. 65). 

And Mr. Judge, at one time the American Vice- 
President of the Society said: 

Now then, either I am bringing you a true message 
from the Master, or the whole T. S. and E. S. T.isa 
lie, in the ruins of which must be buried the names 
of H. P. B. and the Masters. All these stand to- 
Aa as they fall together (Quoted from Op. cit., p. 

oy! 
Thus Madame Blavatsky discovered another pri- 
vate right of way to Divine Wisdom through her 
Mahatmas. And the “ Divine Wisdom” which 
she left in The Secret Doctrine is to-day accepted 
as the true science and philosophy of life. | 

Everything went along most successfully with 
this new cult after it became well established in 
India, until Madame Blavatsky left India and 
journeyed to England in search of more worlds 
to conquer. During her absence, her followers 
who were left in charge of the cult in India, got 
into a wrangle which resulted in the dismissal from 
its ranks of two of her oldest associates, M. and 
Madame Coulomb, who had been her confederates 
years before when in Cairo, Egypt, she had been 


88 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


a spiritistic medium. One of the first things these 
excommunicated followers did was to go direct to 
the Christian College in Madras, and confess to 
the missionaries all they knew about the mahatmas 
who had been responsible for Madame Blavatsky’s 
alleged miracles. The Christian College at Madras 
made a very thorough investigation of the whole 
affair and found the confessions of M. and 
Madame Coulomb to be verified by abundant evi- 
dence. ‘he matter was reported to the English 
Society for Psychical Research, and in 1884 they 
sent Mr. Richard Hodgson to India to investigate 
the reports. After spending three months in 
India, he returned and made his report which is 
found in the Proceedings of the Society for Psy- 
chical Research, 1885. His report confirms the 
confessions of M. and Madame Coulomb and the 
findings of the Christian College at Madras. All 
agree in pronouncing Madame Blavatsky’s ma- 
hatmas, the alleged letters which she received from 
them, their appearances, the miracles which they 
supposedly wrought through her, and the origin of 
The Secret Doctrine, fraudulent representations. 
In 1894 the Christian College published its findings 
in a little book entitled The Theosophic Craze. 
This book together with the Report by the Society 
for Psychical Research contain sufficient evidence 
to convince any open-minded person of the truth 
of their conclusions. So that if the truth of 
Theosophy hangs upon the slender thread of the 
truth of the existence of Madame Blavatsky’s 
mahatmas, it hangs by a very delicate thread. 
Theosophy becomes a pseudo-science when it ac- 


OCCULTISM 89 


cepts The Secret Doctrine obtained by special com- 
munication from the mahatmas, as the sum of 
“Divine Wisdom” and truth. It is stressed in 
this modern age as the Science of Life. Let us 
quote one statement contained in the November, 
1922, Theosophy, its monthly magazine. There 
we read: 


It was predicted by H. P. B. a few years before 
her death that The Secret Doctrine would one day 
become the text-book of science. 


Then follows this statement: 


Every verified pronunciamento of the scientists of 
our day is either clearly set forth, or unavoidably to 
be inferred from what is definitely stated, in The 
Secret Doctrine. 


The editorial concludes with this remark: 


Is it not inevitable that scientists will at last be- 
come aware of this startling fact as discovery after 
discovery further establishes it, and turn with grate- 
ful acknowledgment to Theosophy, and to H. P. B. 
who knew tt? 


H. P. B. stands for Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 
to whom, as the revealer of ancient and eternal 
truth, Theosophists are endeavouring to convert 
the world. Incidentally the history of the origin 
of The Secret Doctrine is as amazing as that of 
Science and Health. 

Spiritism. In spiritism we have another pseudo- 
scientific, pseudo-religious cult. It also has its own 
private right of way which leads direct to the pos- 
session of Divine Truth. It reduces the process to 
the elemental one of communication by word of 


909 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


mouth from personality to personality, or by the 
direct control by spirits of the means of com- 
munication such as the pencil, ouija board, tipping 
table, trumpet, slate, or book in which truth is 
found, etc. The occult corner in spiritism is the 
medium and the séance. Mediums are specially 
endowed psychics who possess the power to com- 
municate with spirits in the other world. Spirit- 
ism professes to obtain knowledge and truth di- 
rect from the spirits who are “there,” and know 
about what they are talking. Thus they are in 
position to bring us New Revelations of Truth 
direct from God. Sir Conan Doyle says: 


It seemed that all these phenomena, large and small, 
had been the telephone bells which, senseless in them- 
selves, had signalled to the human race: “ Rouse 
yourselves! Stand by! Be at attention! Here are 
signs for you. They will lead up to the message 
which God wishes to send (New Revelation, p. 40). 


In his second book The Vital Message he says: 


On the spiritual side I can speak with the force of 
knowledge from beyond (p. 16). 


If this be true, it is easy to see the advantage 
which the spiritist possesses especially when it 
comes to knowledge about life after death. Natu- 
rally the medium becomes the important factor in 
spiritism. Of these psychic persons, Sir Conan 
Doyle says: 


I consider that in these days of doubt and sorrow, a 
genuine professional medium is the most useful mem- 
ber of the whole community (Wanderings of a Spir- 
itualist, p. 20). 


OCCULTISM 91 


Spiritism claims to be a psychic science. It 
professes to substitute facts for faith concerning 
life beyond death. The validity of its claim de- 
pends upon the reality of its communications. And 
science when physics, physiology and psychology 
have been heard in the case is no longer puzzled 
about the séance and its mysterious phenomena, 
and the expert psychologist is no longer puzzled 
over the medium. In The Biblical Review for 
April, 1920, we published a study of Sir Oliver 
Lodge’s “ Raymond” communications, and in the 
July, 1922, issue, we have a study of Sir Conan 
Doyle and his evidence for spirit communications. 
Shortly we hope to publish a book treating the 
whole subject. It is worth noting in conclusion 
that spiritism primarily makes its appeal neither 
to the scientist seeking knowledge nor to the the- 
ologian seeking religious truth, but to the tragically 
bereaved who have lost their religious faith and 
so have not been able to recover in a normal and 
healthy manner from the staggering blow of their 
personal loss. Groping around in the dark for 
some comfort and spiritual help, they are easy 
victims for spiritistic proselyters. 

It is unnecessary to continue our list of super- 
belief cults. Those we have studied are most rep- 
resentative and, with the exception of Mormonism 
which is unique and should be studied by itself, 
include all types worthy of consideration. Each 
is a curious blend of pseudo-science and parasitic 
religion functioning through the occult. Super- 
belief cults in religion may be likened to patent 
medicine panaceas in medical science. They seem 


92 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


to work marvellous cures, and they do it in the 
same way. Since the law has compelled the publi- 
cation of the formulas of all patent medicines, 
the fact has been revealed that some of the most 
popular remedies rely upon one of three drugs for 
their efficacy—alcohol, dope, poisons. ‘The equiv- 
alents which these spiritual patent medicine 
panaceas employ are the poisons of error and half- 
truths, the alcoholic stimulant of unreasonable and 
unwarranted hope, and the dope of denial. Any 
of which spiritual drugs taken in large enough 
quantities will permanently injure the intellectual 
and spiritual organs of a person so that they are 
no longer capable of functioning normally upon 
scientific facts and philosophical and theological 
truth. For years the uninformed laity, in spite of 
continued warnings from physicians, were disposed 
to regard the patent medicine business with patron- 
izing benevolence and over-generous toleration. 
Personally they had no use for these concoctions, 
but as long as those who did take them seemed to 
be benefited, why worry? Not until the physi- 
cians, who knew all the while by what means the 
purveyors of these patent medicine panaceas were 
effecting their alleged marvellous cures, inaugu- 
rated a determined campaign of publicity and edu- 
cation which opened the eyes of the laity to the 
fact that not only were the addicts of these patent 
medicines injuring their own physical and moral 
constitutions, but that they were transmitting to 
their innocent and unprotected children these 
weaknesses, did toleration cease to become a vir- 
tue and take on the nature of a vice. Then it was 


OCCULTISM 93 


that the law was passed which requires all patent 
medicines to print upon their labels the correct 
ingredients of their compounds. Thus driven out 
into the open, the injury from this source has been 
reduced by a very great margin. 

In the field of spiritual therapy the same ex- 
perience is being paralleled. The uninformed laity 
are disposed to regard most of the super-belief 
cults—the patent medicine panaceas of spiritual 
therapy—with patronizing benevolence and over- 
generous toleration. ‘The middle-lifers who take 
them, seem to get some good out of them, why 
worry? But when one investigates them 
thoroughly and becomes acquainted with the lives 
of most of their founders, the history of the move- 
ments from the beginning, their methods of opera- 
tion, their machinery of propaganda, their com- 
mercial interests, their scientific, philosophical, 
theological nature, and the injurious effects of 
these spiritual drugs upon the intellectual and spir- 
itual constitution of the children of the second 
generation, the desire to extenuate is overpowered 
by duty’s urge to expose. In this field also pub- 
licity is the only safeguard for the ignorant and 
unsuspecting. Public opinion should be aroused 
by a determined campaign of publicity and educa- 
tion to the point where all super-belief cults are 
forced out of their occult corners into the open 
and compelled to print upon their labels in plain 
language the exact ingredients of their spiritual 
panaceas. Then at least their converts will have 
a chance to know what they are taking. 


IV 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS OF SPIRITUAL 
HEALING 


HILE the New Thought Movement 
VW uses the term “ spiritual healing” to 
distinguish its system from that of 
Christian Science, which it styles ‘‘ mental heal- 
ing,” we employ the term to designate all those 
systems of healing which dispense with material 
aids and remedies in the treatment of patients and 
rely exclusively upon non-material means for ef- 
fecting cures. Before medical science had made 
the tremendous strides in the preservation of 
health and the conquest of disease which have 
marked its progress during the last century, such 
systems of healing thrived. The achievements of 
Materia Medica for a number of years discredited 
all of these non-material systems of healing to such 
an extent that they had little intellectual standing 
and slight recognition. ‘To-day, however, they are 
rallying their forces and edging their way back 
into considerable public recognition. Christian 
Science, New Thought, Spiritism, The Emmanuel 
Movement, Faith Healing, Bible Healing, Mind 
Cure, Hypnotism, Psychoanalysis, The Church of 
the Healing Christ, Divine Science, Metaphysical 
Healing, Vitality Societies, Zest Societies, etc., are 
a few among the many varieties which are doing 
business in America to-day. 
While each of these systems insists that it has 
94 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 95 


nothing in common with others of the same class, 
they all agree in their belief that sickness can be 
cured without the use of material remedies. They 
range from Christian Science which denies the 
existence of matter and asserts that knowledge of 
anatomy, physiology and medicine are the primary 
cause of disease, to psychoanalysis which calls to 
its assistance all the knowledge of physiology and 
psychology and is employed by educated and 
trained physicians, In order to understand these 
systems of spiritual healing, it will be necessary 
to acquaint ourselves with the fundamental prin- 
ciples of a few of the outstanding ones. 

Christian Science. By far the best known of 
all these systems is Christian Science. In The 
Non-Sense of Christian Science we have fully 
analyzed this system of healing, so that it will 
not be necessary to devote much space to it at this 
time. Mrs. Eddy takes up one by one all of the 
fundamental elements of medical science from 
physiology to sanitation, and after pointing out 
their fatal defects, rejects them all. For example, 
physiology she declares to be ‘“‘ one of the apples 
from ‘the tree of knowledge. Her readers are 
informed that the eating of the fruit of this tree 
of knowledge in disobedience to God’s command 
is the direct cause of most human illness. (See 
Science and Health, chapter, Physiology.) This 
knowledge is so destructive that even the innocent 
animals are victims of its spread. Mrs. Eddy cites 
several instances of this fact. We will give one: 


EME Bd 


You can educate a healthy horse so far in physi- 


96 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


ology that he will take cold without his blanket, 
whereas the wild animal, left to his instincts, sniffs 
the wind with delight. The epizootic is an humanly 
evolved ailment, which a wild horse might never 
have (Science and Health, p. 179). 


How Mrs. Eddy knows that wild horses never 
have the epizootic is not revealed. But that 
physiology and Spirit cannot work together in her 
science of healing she leaves no doubt. Upon this 
point she says: 


We cannot obey both physiology and Spirit, for the 
one absolutely destroys the other, and one or the 
other must be supreme in the affections. It is im- 
possible to work from two standpoints (Science and 
Health, p. 182). 


If “the one absolutely destroys the other,” co- 
operation becomes impossible. Fortunately she 
claims that she had no need of the help of physi- 
ology or medical science. This important fact is 
thus stated: 


It is anything but scientifically Christian to think 
of aiding the divine Principle of healing or of trying 
to sustain the human body until the divine Mind is 
ready to take the case. Divinity is always ready. 
Semper paratus is Truth’s motto. Having seen so 
much suffering from quackery, the author desires to 
keep it out of Christian Science (Science and Health, 
p. 458). 


This confident assertion is written to inspire the 
faith of patients, and for propaganda purposes. 
To her healers, quietly on the side, she writes: 


Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and 
supremacy of Mind, it is better for Christian Sci- 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 97 


entists to leave surgery and the adjustment of broken 
bones and dislocations to the fingers of a surgeon, 
while the mental healer confines himself chiefly to 
mental reconstruction and to the prevention of in- 
flammation (Science and Health, p. 401). 


And again, she writes: 


If from an injury or from any cause, a Christian 
Scientist were seized with pain so violent that he 
could not treat himself mentally,—and the Scientists 
had failed to relieve him—the sufferer could call a 
surgeon, who would give him a hypodermic injection, 
then, when the belief in pain was lulled, he could 
handle his own case mentally. Thus it is that we 
“prove all things; (and) hold fast that which is good” 
(Science and Health, p. 464). 


Evidently the surgeon and the hypodermic nee- 
dle are two things to which even Christian Scien- 
tists are going to hold fast as “ good.” It might 
be added that Mrs. Eddy herself always held fast 
to a physician or two. And when she adopted a 
son to be with her in her home, he chanced to be 
a full-fledged physician. And yet this is the 
book of which she says: “In this volume of mine 
there are no contradictory statements” (Science 
and Health, p. 345). 

Theoretically, however, Christian Science does 
not serve two masters—Mind and medicine. Mrs. 
Fiddy’s science of healing does not require medi- 
cine, for the cause of all disease is mental. Its 
etiology she boils down to this one fact: “A false 
belief is both . . . the disease and its cause ”’ 
(Science and Health, p. 393). She illustrates this 
fact by many interesting observations. Here is a 

. sample: 


98 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


We are told that the simple food our forefathers 
ate helped to make them healthy, but that is a mis- 
take. Their diet would not cure dyspepsia at this 
period. With rules of health in the head and the 
most digestible food in the stomach there would stiil 
be dyspeptics (Science and Health, p. 197). 


Since a “ false belief is both the disease and its 
cause,” the cure for disease is simple. Mrs. Eddy’s 
prescription is the following: 


The efficient remedy is to destroy the patient’s false 
belief by both silently and audibly arguing the true 
facts in regard to harmonious being (Science and 
Health, p. 376). 


Mrs. Eddy goes into great detail to prove that 
this one remedy applies equally to all kinds of dis- 
ease and human ailments from boils to broken 
bones, in spite of the passage quoted about the 
surgeon and broken bones. ‘This fact becomes 
clear when it is remembered that the cause of the 
false belief, which is both the disease and its cause, 
is knowledge. She puts the matter thus: 


One disease is no more real than another. All dis- 
ease is the result of education (Science and Health, 
Day): 


Without going any further into this subject, it 
must be evident that Mrs. Eddy’s science of heal- 
ing is based upon super-beliefs. 

New Thought. Having gained some knowledge 
of New Thought in the chapter on Occultism, it 
remains to learn the technic of its system of heal- 
ing. As has already been pointed out, in spite of 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 99 


its name “New Thought,” Spirit, not Mind, is 
the healing agent. The cause of disease is no 
longer a wrong thought, it is a wrong spiritual 
condition. Let us sum up again very briefly Mr. 
Horatio W. Dresser’s philosophy of the New 
Thought Movement as given in his recent book, 
Spiritual Health and Healing. Its principles are: 


All power is in spiritual life (p. 103). 

We look to the spiritual realm as the basis of 
causality, the one ultimate source of energy (p. 276). 

Real causes are spiritual, natural events are effects 


(De 102). ee 
There is a discrete difference between spiritual and 
natural things. . . . There is no interfusion or 


blending (p. 162). 


At this point Mr. Dresser launches into the new 
theory of New Thought which is featured as su- 
perior to Christian Science. So we read: 


What is it that possesses mind, that feels, thinks and 
wills? The human spirit. . . . Mind might bea 
faithful servant in each of us if we understood and 
had learned to control all the mental elements. It is 
spirit that controls. It is the mind that is brought into 
order (p. 243 f.). 


Spirit has another advantage over mind, it has 
a secret place in the innermost spirit of man, be- 
_ yond the reach of reason and analysis, where there 
takes place the “ conjunction between the Divine 
and the human.” Mr. Dresser makes this addi- 
tional observation concerning this secret place. 
He says: 


The ideal of this union is the Divine-human, the 


100 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


Christ. The place is the region of the incarnation of 
the heavenly Heart in the human heart (p. 245). 


Thus man becomes his own saviour, and the in- 
carnation is enacted in every individual heart that 
seeks this secret place and takes advantage of the 
union it affords with Infinite Spirit. Here the 
finite spirit finds placed at its disposal the infinite 
resources of Omnipotent and Omniscient Spirit. 
Therefore it is Infinite Spirit which becomes the 
healing agent in New Thought. Mr. Dresser says: 


Man has no such powers in and of himself to work 
such wonders. In that larger estate it is God who 
achieves, not man (p. 103). 


In this claim, New Thought joins with Christian 
Science. For Mrs. Eddy insists that it is Divine 
Mind, not the human mind or mortal mind, which 
is her healing agent. New Thought does away 
with the necessity for spiritual senses which en- 
able the human mind to communicate directly with 
the Divine Mind, such as Mrs. Eddy’s idea re- 
quires. Every human soul has access to the in- 
nermost spirit of its being where this secret place 
is located, and there he finds Infinite Spirit wait- 
ing to help. While this theory of New Thought 
greatly simplifies the problem of gaining direct 
access to Infinite Spirit, yet it has this one serious 
defect. The psychologist finds no such secret place 
within human personality. It is an occult corner, 
as we have already shown, which cannot exist and 
at the same time afford the human spirit a chance 
to conjoin with the Divine Spirit without at that 
instance creating a disturbance in thought, feeling 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 101 


and will which instantly comes within the reach of 
reason and analysis. When then, New Thought 
is smoked out of its secret place into the open, and 
its system of healing analyzed, it is found to em- 
ploy the same psychological means for preserving 
health and curing disease as its rivals. 

Spiritism. One phase of spiritism upon which 
we have not touched is its system of healing. 
Spiritism was in the field of spiritual healing some 
years before either Christian Science or New 
Thought. In 1850 to 1860, it was claiming to be 
the second appearing of Christ because it healed 
the sick as Jesus did, the same claim Mrs. Eddy 
makes for Christian Science. Andrew Jackson 
Davis, the most famous of the early healing me- 
diums, published his book on The Physician in 
1865. He claimed to perform his miracles of 
healing through the assistance of several dis- 
tinguished spirits, who at his call wrought cures. 
No less distinguished a spiritist than Dr. James H. 
Hyslop, at the time of his death, the secretary of 
the American Society for Psychical Research, in 
his latest book Contact With the Other World, 
published in 1919, devotes a whole chapter to Ob- 
session. In this, he informs us that many diseases 
which physicians vainly endeavour to cure with 
medicine are the direct result of the invasion of 
human personality by evil-disposed spirits. To 
spiritists then, disease is caused not by wrong 
thoughts or a wrong spiritual condition, but by 
wrong spirits, that is, evil spirits. And such 
physical disturbances of mind and body cannot be 
cured save as these evil spirits are exorcized by 


102 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


spirit mediums. Sir Conan Doyle holds the same 
belief and has warned those who disturb the tombs 
of the ancient dead that the spirits will revenge 
such desecration by inflicting sickness and death 
as a penalty. 

In Washington, D. C., a group of spiritists have 
developed this department of spirit healing to a 
high state of perfection. The Oriental University 
has among its many branches a healing depart- 
ment. One of its Bulletins contains this adver- 
tisement: 


We regret that we cannot bring details about an- 
other phase of Theomonism, that of healing spirits, a 
strong band of famous physicians and surgeons now 
in spirit land, who perform wonderful healings every 
Wednesday evening when Professor Holler is enabled 
by the spiritual X-ray to look into the bodies of pa- 
tients and detect the defects as well as observe the 
mode of healing by spirits. All that is in the way of 
giving full publicity to all of these most interesting, 
and from a scientific and utilitarian standpoint, most 
valuable, evidences is a lack of money. 

A word to the “ wise’ * ignoramus and the scoffing 
agnostics, as well as to slow ecclesiastics: Judge not 
what you do not understand, and avoid any attempt at 
placing yourself in an awkward position of explain- 
ing away facts: for you won't be able to disprove 
them! (December, 1913). 


The Theomonistic system of spirit healing has 
many attractive features which even “slow ec- 
clesiastics ” can appreciate. The discovery of the 
spiritual X-ray is one. Another is the opportunity 
it affords for consulting the most distinguished 
physicians and surgeons now in spirit-land for the 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 103 


price of a sitting with Professor Holler. When 
on earth these physicians and surgeons charged so 
much that most of us were not financially able to 
avail ourselves of their knowledge and skill. Now 
that they are in spirit-land they have no use for 
money and so practice “ for the love of it.” The 
Oriental University thrived until the recent move- 
ment was launched to exterminate the “ diploma 
mills’ which have been supplying quack doctors * 
with unearned medical diplomas. Unfortunately 
the “ Bishop-Doctor’’ who is president of this Uni- 
versity, we read, is one of those who is now under 
indictment in Washington for running a one-man 
school in which he offered 648 courses, and issued 
diplomas in medicine, theology, spiritualism, me- 
diumship, etc. Whatever we may think of spirit- 
ism’s system of healing, mediums are credited 
with as amazing a list of cures as other systems of 
spiritual healing. 

Faith Healing. Faith Healing and Bible Healing 
movements do not claim to have reduced their 
systems of healing to a science. Their advocates 
are content to accept them as miraculous, and 
therefore not to be explained scientifically. For 
this reason they do not come under the head of 
pseudo-sciences operating through the occult. 
Therefore we will not stop to discuss them at this 
time. Some light will be thrown upon many of 
their principles in our later discussion. 

Hypnotism and Psychoanalysis. ‘These methods 
of healing stand at the opposite extreme from 
Faith Healing. ‘They proceed upon the basis of 
the known rather than upon the unknown and the 


104 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


occult. They use the scientific knowledge of psy- 
chology and medical science, they regard knowl- 
edge and training as essential, and endeavour to 
brighten the occult corners in their field of opera- 
tion rather than to protect them from reason and 
analysis. ‘Therefore they do not come under the 
super-belief cult classification. 

Couéism. No study of spiritual healing would 
be satisfactory to-day without a word about Coué- 
ism, one of the most popular systems for the mo- 
ment. Couéism represents the rationalistic branch 
of the spiritual healing movement. It does not 
make any alliance with religion. There is a rea- 
son for this. In France, the Roman Catholic 
Church occupies the whole field of spiritual heal- 
ing in which religious faith is an important factor. 
It has no successful competitors. This is why 
Christian Science has been able to make such lit- 
tle headway in France. One cannot go anywhere 
in that country without running across this phase 
of the Roman Catholic Church’s work. Cathedrals 
and churches are decorated with marble tablets, 
donated by those who have been healed. Stacks 
of crutches, canes, trusses, glasses, tobacco pipes, 
and other discarded aids of disability and infirmity 
are placed in prominent view. The relics of saints, 
and shrines of healing are scattered everywhere. 
All of those who are capable of being reached and 
healed by this branch of spiritual healing are cared 
for by the machinery of the Church. But there 
are in France many Protestants and free-thinkers 
and atheists, who are shut out from help of this 
kind. It is to this latter class that M. Coué’s sys- 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 105 


tem of healing is designed to appeal. In England 
and this country many Coué enthusiasts endeav- 
oured to persuade him to introduce the religious 
element into his method of healing. The Vice- 
provost of Eton College, England, pressed him 
hard to add the words “Thank God” to his 
formula. But, while M. Coué is perfectly willing 
that any one who so desires may make that addi- 
tion, he has steadily refused to incorporate the 
religious element into it. M. Coué is endeavour- 
ing to reach the large group of people to whom 
the religious brand of spiritual healing does not 
appeal. For this reason he does not directly con- 
flict with Christian Science, New Thought, Em- 
manuel Movement, Faith Cure, Bible Healing or 
any of these religious systems. And still he has a 
large clientele of neglected middle-lifers upon 
whom to work. 

M. Coué is not a pioneer in this field. Re- 
ligiously, temperamentally, and psychologically, 
France has always been a fertile field for spiritual 
healing. It was to Paris that Friedrich Anton 
Mesmer, the originator of Mesmerism, came, when 
he was driven from Austria. Mesmer was a phy- 
sician who claimed to have discovered a magnetic 
fluid which possessed unusual healing properties. 
By means of a large tub filled with bottles and 
water, a travesty on the electric battery, Mesmer 
generated spiritual electricity with which he 
worked some most marvellous cures. The reality 
of the cures was unquestioned, but the reality of 
the spiritual electricity or magnetic fluid generated 
by this battery soon fell under suspicion. | 


106 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


After a few years it was discovered that there 
was no such thing as a magnetic fluid generated 
by Mesmer’s apparatus, therefore some other ex- 
planation of the cures had to be found. In 1785 
the two Puysegur brothers, both of whom had 
studied under Mesmer, summed up the substance 
of Mesmerism in these words: “ Believe and Will.” 
With this discovery Mesmerism was uprooted 
from the soil of physics and transplanted in that 
of psychology, and the mysterious healing agent 
was rechristened “animal magnetism.” At 
Nancy, the home of M. Coué, and at Busancy, this 
new system of healing was made the subject of 
special study. 

In 1834, M. Charles Poyen, a French medical 
student, who had been healed by mesmerism and 
become a convert to it, came to America. He 
began a series of lectures and demonstrations on 
the mysterious power of mesmerism, or animal 
magnetism, as he called it. The scene of his ac- 
tivities was in and around Boston. ‘The account 
of his itinerary and the results of his demonstra- 
tions are published in a book which was issued in 
1837, entitled The Progress of Animal Magnetism. 
The book gives the towns in which meetings were 
held. Among them are the towns in which Mrs. 
Eddy spent her younger days. Her family physi- 
cian became interested, learned the art of mesmer- 
ism, and used it upon his patients. Mary Baker 
was one of these; and she became such a sensitive 
subject that her physician made use of her at times 
for demonstrations. When she states that she was 
familiar with mesmerism, she is recalling these 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 107 


early days. M. Poyen made much of what he 
called “‘ absent treatment.” It was from this “ ani- 
mal magnetism” that Mrs, Eddy developed her 
idea of “‘ malicious animal magnetism.” 

M. Poyen’s demonstrations of the power of mes- 
merism fascinated a little clock-maker of Port- 
land, Maine, by the name of P. P. Quimby. Mr. 
Quimby, with whom we are already acquainted, 
became so interested in this mysterious power, that 
he devoted all of his spare time to experimenting 
with it. Like M. Coué, he discovered that in an 
unusual degree he possessed the ability to mesmer- 
ize others. It was not long before he gave up his 
craft of clock-maker and went on the road as a 
mesmerist and healer. During the first years, he 
took with him a helper named Lucius Burkmar, 
whom he mesmerized, and who in the mesmeric 
state was able to diagnose ailments and prescribe 
effectual remedies. After a time Mr. Quimby dis- 
covered that it was not Lucius, but himself, who 
was diagnosing the ills of his patients and pre- 
scribing remedies. Next, he discovered that he 
could cure his patients without prescribing ma- 
terial remedies, by the simple process of changing 
their wrong thoughts. Out of these discoveries he 
finally worked a system of mental healing with 
which he wrought many wonderful cures and be- 
came quite famous. ‘To him came Mrs. Eddy, 
Rev. Warren F. Evans, Julius A. Dresser, the 
father of Horatio W. Dresser, and many other 
people as patients. In those days, Mr. Quimby 
did not enjoy the popularity of aristocratic patron- 
age, as M. Coué to-day does. For his system of 


108 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


mental healing seemed so mysterious that it was 
looked upon as akin to witchcraft—and Salem was 
only twenty miles away. 

We have taken the trouble to show how closely 
the experiences of Mr. Quimby parallel those of M. 
Coué, to let the reader know that both came di- 
rectly from mesmerism, or hypnotism, to spiritual 
healing. Had Mr. Quimbly lived in our day he 
would have been as famous as M. Coué for he 
was:a most successful healer. 

M. Coué emphasizes the rationalistic element. 
He insists that he is not a miracle-worker, he 
frankly admits that he does not cure his patients, he 
only teaches them how to heal themselves through 
autosuggestion. He does not profess to cure all 
ailments, he carefully selects his patients. And 
the unusual fact that he does not take any fee for 
healing, puts him in a class by himself and inspires 
confidence. ‘These features keep him from an- 
tagonizing orthodox medical science, psychology 
and the Church. In explaining the technic of his 
system he says that he appeals to the imagination 
instead of to the will, because the imagination has 
a more direct access to the subconscious mind, and 
the subconscious mind controls the activities of all 
the organs and involuntary operations of the 
physical body. We suspect that both physiology 
and psychology may find something lacking in M. 
Coueé’s knowledge of their sciences, but he has good 
scientific reasons for his appeal to the imagination. 
He says that most people struggle with the will, 
while he ignores the will and works with the im- 
agination. For, he says, when the will and the 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 109 


imagination are antagonistic, the imagination al- 
ways wins. When the will and the imagination 
are in agreement, they supplement each other. 
While the will is stubborn, the imagination is pli- 
able and can be controlled and directed. It is 
therefore the ideal faculty with which to work 
when one wants to get definite results. There is 
some truth in this statement, but it all depends 
upon the type of person with whom one is work- 
ing. The fact that M. Coué finds this true of 
those whom he succeeds in healing, reveals the 
type of persons with whom he deals. His knowl- 
edge of psychology is not sufficient to have ac- 
quainted him with the fact that those whom he 
sets aside as failures, are those in whom imagina- 
tion and will are working normally, and those with 
whom he succeeds are those in whom the will and 
the reason are not quite equal to their task. The 
technic of a Coué treatment is thus given: 


The patient tranquillizes himself, makes his mind as 
nearly blank as possible, and says articulately, pref- 
erably in a semi-detached and dreamy sort of way, 
“Every day in every way I am getting better and bet- 
ter.’ The second “ every” must be emphasized, and 
that the verbigerating articular does not get mixed in 
“his love,” he is recommended to make use of an 
improvised rosary, that is, a string with twenty knots 
tied in it, and in this he must “ autosuggest”” every 
morning before rising, and every night upon getting 
into bed (Journal of The American Medical Associa- 
tion, September 30, 1922). 


The psychological principles underlying Couéism 
will be discussed later. 


110 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


Gayerism. We will now select a typical repre- 
sentative from the remaining miscellaneous group 
of systems of spiritual healing which have not at- 
tained the distinction of becoming widely known 
cults. 

Those who read the religious announcements in 
the New York Saturday daily papers, have often 
noticed the name of Gayer in large letters with 
the words: “ Most Worthwhile Meeting in Town.” 
It may be interesting to attend one of Dr. Gayer’s 
meetings which are held every Sunday afternoon 
at the Hotel Astor. A splendid account of his 
meeting and method is contained in the New York 
Tribune, December 11, 1922. It bears this head- 
line: “ Magic of Coué Pales Before Potent Chant 
of Healer Here.” The account runs: 


A white-haired ‘‘mental healer,’ his cadenced 
words clothed in the richest drapery of metaphor, 
lulled a fashionable audience into a semi-slumbrous 
conditon at the Hotel Astor yesterday afternoon, 
while he voiced his theories on self-healing. 

It was not the slumber of boredom that Dr. Gustav 
A. Gayer induced. It was a deliberate, carefully 
planned state of hypnosis, brought on by suggestion, 
by the careful choice of words, the studied music of 
tones, and lastly, by a stringed orchestra, at times the 
barest echo of his voice, and again rich and full in 
its suggestion of confidence. When his audience, 
which was 80 per cent. feminine, reaches what he 
calls the semi-conscious state, “eyes closed, minds 
receptive,” he turns on his batteries of autosugges- 
tion. 

It was a kind of intellectualized Couéism of high 
voltage that Dr. Gayer expounded. It was more sub- 
tle, less reiterative than the teaching of the little 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 111 


Frenchman, but the underlying idea of infinite capac- 
ity within one’s self, infinite power to triumph over 
sickness and difficulty was the same. For forty 
years Dr. Gayer has been a student of mental sick- 
ness. . . . He opened a mental clinic here some 
twenty years ago, and still holds a free clinic for the 
poor at his office on Saturday afternoons. Crowds 
flock to these meetings. 


Dr. Gayer’s principles are contained in these 
statements: 


Your faith and your will are hard at work to get 
you the legitimate things you want. 

Your subconscious mind responds to your sugges- 
tion and affirmations about yourself. 

Wage war against fear and worry. No accident, 
no weakness, no sickness can befall you. You are 
immune from trouble. 

You are enabled to realize your ambition through 
the strength of your will. 


It will be a good idea to read and reread the 
description of Dr. Gayer’s technic of getting his 
audience into the semiconscious state, that 1s, 
ready for him to “turn on his batteries of auto- 
suggestion.” This will help in understanding 
what follows. 

The Fundamental Principles of Spiritual Heal- 
ing. While each of these systems of spiritual heal- 
ing confidently affirms that it has discovered and 
is employing some original secret in its method of 
healing, a careful psychological analysis discloses 
the fact that they all use exactly the same prin- 
ciples. ‘The differences arise from the varying 
methods used to get the patient ready for sugges- 


112 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


tion, and the element in consciousness which is 
stressed. Let us start with this proposition: Every 
act of consciousness is a unit in which thought, 
feeling and will form constituent parts. The varia- 
tions in these systems of healing arise from the 
fact that in one, thought, the rational element, in 
another, feeling, the emotional element, in another, 
the will, the volitional element is appealed to as 
dominant. Each of these elements has the capacity 
to respond. But the first preliminary necessity for 
a super-belief healing cult is to clear the way for 
its line of suggestion to work. Here, they all re- 
sort to varying devices which embody the same 
psychological principle. 

What the hypnotist accomplishes by putting his 
patient into an hypnotic sleep; what Dr. Gayer ac- 
complishes by his cadences, music and metaphor; 
what the Christian Science healer accomplishes by 
sitting down calmly by the bedside of the patient 
and “arguing both silently and audibly the facts 
of harmonious being,’ while reading a few pas- 
sages from the un-understandable pages of Science 
and Health; what the Roman Catholic Church ac- 
complishes by its use of glittering altars, flickering 
candles, images, pictures, elaborate ritual, cere- 
monies, incense, incantations and chants in an un- 
known language; what New Thought accomplishes 
by pushing the disturbed spirit back into the “ Se- 
cret Place” beyond the reach of reason; what the 
Theosophist accomplishes by its darkness, solitude, 
closed eyes, meditation, and psychical devices for 
bearing the spirit away from the physical body to 
the astral body, which is the hypnotic state; what 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 113 


the spiritist accomplishes through the séance, the 
semi-darkness, the mysterious passes and remarks 
of the medium, the trance state and the dark cab- 
inet; that, M. Coué accomplishes by getting his 
patients voluntarily to tranquillize themselves, 
make their minds as nearly blank as possible and 
repeat in a semi-detached sort of way his little 
formula, “‘ Every day in every way I am getting 
better and better,’ twenty times after retiring and 
twenty times every morning before arising. M. 
Coué describes his system as an appeal to the im- 
agination rather than to the intellect or will. In 
fact, it is nothing more or less than a simple device 
to produce slight hypnosis whereby the reason is 
unseated, all inhibitions removed and any rational 
or volitional reactions against the suggestions of 
M. Coué effectually forestalled. In this way sug- 
gestion is given the right of way while in the pres- 
ence of M. Coué, and also a chance to return morn- 
ing and night. In each system, by whatever de- 
vice adopted, the same result is obtained, light 
hypnosis is secured, then follows suggestion. 
The nature of the suggestion depends upon the 
end sought by the patient. 

Cures. Are genuine cures made? When con- 
fronted by this question, we are placed in the 
dilemma which so disturbed the rulers, scribes and 
priests in Jerusalem when Peter and John healed 
the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Tem- 
ple. ‘‘ Beholding the man which was healed stand- 
ing with them, they could say nothing against it” 
(Acts 4:14). Beholding so many who have been 
healed by every one of these systems of spiritual 


114 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


healing standing in the midst of them testifying to 
the fact that they have been healed, we cannot 
deny the fact that cures are made. The only doubt 
which can be raised is as to the accuracy of the 
diagnosis, the permanency of the cure, and the 
effects of the method upon the patient. 

Nerves. Until the discovery of the wncon- 
scious mind and the progress made in the analysis 
of the causes of neurosis by psychoanalysis, the 
puzzle of spiritual healing could not be satisfac- 
torily unravelled. Orthodox medical science could 
only proceed negatively and eliminate one by one 
the suspected causes of the ailment, and finding 
no lesions and no organic trouble, set the ailment 
down to the already overburdened account of 
“nerves.”’ And nerves have been the undoing of 
most materialistic medical practitioners. When 
the physician finds no infections, no poisons, no 
organic trouble and nothing to mend or cut out, 
he can do nothing. Fortunately analytical psy- 
chology has shown us that there is something 
which can be done in this situation. Dr. Joseph- 
ine Jackson, in her most readable book entitled 
Outwitiing Our Nerves, gives this interesting item 
of information: 


So far as the modern laboratory can discover, the 
nerves of the most confirmed neurotic are perfectly 
healthy. They are not starved, nor depleted, nor 
exhausted; the fat sheath is not wanting, there is no 
inflammation, there is nothing lacking in the cell itself, 
and there is no accumulation of fatigue products. 
Paradoxical as it may sound, there is nothing the 
matter with the nervous person’s nerves (p. 10 f.). 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 115 


Dr. Jackson is undoubtedly referring here to the 
chronic neurotic whose troubles originate in some 
psychological cause. Acute cases of nervous 
breakdown do at times arise from physiological 
causes. But the nerves of the chronic neurotic 
are generally in exceptionally fine condition. The 
extra work which the imagination of the neurotic 
lays upon them helps to keep them exercised and 
healthy. The seat of the trouble Dr. Jackson gives 
in this passage: 


The trouble is real: the organs do “act up”; the 
nerves do carry wrong messages. But the nerves are 
merely telegraph wires. They are not responsible for 
the messages that are given them to carry. Behind 
the wires is the operator, the man higher up; upon 
him the responsibility falls. In functional troubles 
the body is working in a perfectly normal way consid- 
ering the perverted conditions. . . . The trou- 
bles are not with the bodily machine, but with the 
master. . . . The trouble in nervous disorders is 
in the personality, the soul, the realm of ideas, and 
that is not your body but you (p. 15). 


Dr. Jackson gives her diagnosis of the cause 
back of nervous trouble thus: 


ar 

The gist of the whole matter is this: in a neurosis, 
certain forces of the personality—instincts and their 
accompanying emotions—which ought to work har- 
moniously, having become tangled up with erroneous 
ideas, have lost their power of codperation and are 
working at cross purposes, leaving the individual mis- 
adapted to his environment. . . . The fact that 
the cause is mental while the result is physical should 
cause no surprise (p. 20). 


116 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


Dr. C. G. Jung, one of the greatest of our ana- 
lytical psychologists, explains neurotic disturbances 
thus: 


The psychological trouble in neurosis . . . can 
be considered as an act of adaption that has failed 
(Analytical Psychology, p. 234). 


We do not believe that “instincts and their ac- 
companying emotions’? are as responsible for 
neurosis as failure to effect other adaptations. 
This fact will be seen later. 

Spiritual healers fail to distinguish between 
functional and organic cases. ‘This is not easy, 
for the difference cannot be discovered by symp- 
toms. ‘The nerves of the neurotic person commu- 
nicate to consciousness through the brain centers, 
symptoms and pains that exactly duplicate those 
of organic disease. And so far as the patient is 
concerned, symptoms are symptoms and pains in 
the head, back or stomach are pains, no matter 
what their cause. It is not to be expected that 
the uneducated and untrained spiritual healer who 
knows neither physiology nor psychology should 
be able to distinguish between functional and or- 
ganic disturbances any better than the patient. 
This is not all. Along the border-line between the 
two, functional ailments sometimes settle down 
into organic troubles, and organic troubles of a 
moderate type sometimes subside when the func- 
tional disturbances are removed. So that there 
is a vast area within which incorrect diagnosis can 
easily prevail. Only the physician thoroughly 
trained in physiology and psychology can hope to 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 117 


distinguish between the two, and so be in a posi- 
tion to treat each case according to its nature. 
Let us now see whether we can put into plain 
English the cause of nervous troubles. We have 
learned that these troubles are “ not with the bodily 
machine but with the master.” And as Dr. Jack- 
son says: “ That is not your body but you.” Dr. 
Jung goes to the root of the trouble when he says: 
“The psychological trouble in neurosis 
can be considered an act of adaption that has 
failed.” This statement interests us because it not 
only explains the cause of those troubles which 
have reached the stage of complexes, but also of 
many other psychological disturbances which are 
not yet abnormal in their displacement of the nor- 
mal functioning of thinking, feeling and willing. 
We have shown in our study of chronic unbelief 
that “erroneous ideas” are themselves often 
caused by this same failure to make a successful 
adaption of one’s self to one’s religious environ- 
ment. So that we cannot lay the blame upon the 
mind any more than upon the spirit. And when 
we carry this investigation further we find that 
we cannot lay it any more upon the mind and the 
spirit than upon the body. We quoted from Dr. 
Jackson’s somewhat exaggerated statements be- 
cause it usually takes some extreme statements to 
impress upon the average lay mind the truth con- 
cerning the psychological causes of nervousness. 
It is natural to give the physical causes their full 
weight. But in the last analysis, it will be found 
that nervous troubles are inseparably bound up 
with thinking, feeling, willing as they are con- 


118 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


nected up through the intricate network of nerves, 
muscles and organs of our physical body. Super- 
belief healing cults have the habit of singling out 
one of the guilty parties and making that the scape- 
goat for all the rest. If by some lucky chance they 
succeed in getting hold of one of the guilty parties 
instead of those who are simply minor accessories 
to the wrong-doing, conditions improve. But the 
normal method of dealing with such a situation is 
to deal with all those parties in personality that 
have any share in the trouble, in full knowledge 
of the guilt each bears. The physical side of these 
traumas the medical profession are in position to 
relieve. Infections of the stomach, intestines, 
teeth, tonsils, and head, should receive prompt and 
intelligent attention. But we are interested at this 
time in those which can be diagnosed as psycholog- 
ical traumas. Let us enumerate some of the causes 
which in middle life create the psychological con- 
ditions from which neurosis comes. 

We have already learned that this type of trou- 
ble can always be traced to an adaptation that has 
failed. For even when a physical cause is in the 
background what happens is that the physical dis- 
turbances reduce one’s efficiency and strength to 
the point where inability to turn off work and 
fatigue in doing work, start up worry, and worry 
brings on sleeplessness and loss of appetite. In 
the end, from whatever cause the disturbance 
arises, it creeps back to a failure of adaptation to 
one’s environment. But we will confine our study 
to the psychological causes. Chronic unbelief 
shows that failure to adapt one’s self in childhood 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 119 


to the religious environment of home and social 
group, is capable of influencing throughout a life- 
time the motived-will-to-think and selective atten- 
tion so that a brilliant mind and a conscientious 
scholar will never be able honestly to give full 
weight to the facts of religious experience. Not 
only is this true intellectually, but also morally and 
psychologically. Wherever the old, unhealed life- 
wounds still fester, failure at adaption is indicated 
by reactions that will be exaggerated far beyond 
the normal; and a persistently perverted point of 
view will manifest itself. It is a wholesome ex- 
perience to check up one’s reactions with this in 
mind. 

With an impaired physical, intellectual, moral or 
psychological condition in the background, there 
will result a natural inability successfully to meet 
the normal and inevitable experiences of life. 
Some serious disappointment, some tragic sorrow, 
some unusual failure, some wounded pride, some 
disappointed ambitions, some indulgence of un- 
controlled temper, some disappointment in love, 
some disappointment in married life, some disap- 
pointment in religious experience, some moral con- 
flict in which the higher life-ideal has been forced 
unwillingly to surrender to a lower standard of 
conduct, some sin which has been committed under 
strong temptation upon the impulse of the mo- 
ment, to which one’s better nature has never be- 
come reconciled, and which has never been con- 
fessed; any one or a combination of these experi- 
ences will stir up intellectual, emotional, moral 
conflicts which lead to neurosis. For our own na- 


120 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


tures are much sterner judges than we give them 
credit for being, and will demand that the final 
adaptions along all these lines shall receive the 
full and hearty approval of reason, feeling and 
conscience. Anything less than this full absolu- 
tion from guilt, and self-forgiveness, creates a 
psychological disturbance which manifests its pres- 
ence in every life reaction, and robs one of full 
happiness and peace of mind. In most lives, 
thanks to our moral and religious inheritances, 
early childhood training, and strength of charac- 
ter, these disturbances do not develop into serious 
complexes. ‘They simply reduce the measure of 
one’s happiness, contentment, optimism and faith 
in God and man, which reduction is accepted with 
stoical resignation as an inevitable part of life’s 
experience. 

But in persons of certain temperament, they 
keep alive conflicts of greater or less intensity. In 
the neurotic they create centers of resistance which 
influence the motived-will-to-think and direct selec- 
tive attention to such an extent that sensations, 
thoughts, words, looks, acts, events, personal ex- 
periences are liable to take on perverted and ex- 
aggerated characteristics. In some cases they de- 
velop into well-marked symptoms of particular dis- 
eases. From this wide range of possibilities, many 
results may follow. When the intellectual interest 
predominates in such a life, we get the chronic un- 
believer; when the emotions dominate we get the 
neurotic; when the will is dominant and the person 
is of the action type, we get the moral degenerate 
or wayward life. When all three together are af- 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 121 


fected we get the constitutional iconoclast or image 
breaker. 

The Cure. Suggestion is unquestionably one 
way to cure the pathological condition from which 
this type of trouble arises. The fact that hypno- 
tism and all systems of spiritual healing use this 
method so successfully is proof of the fact that all 
these people need is a little help to strengthen their 
irresolute wills and weak characters. It also re- 
veals how little it takes to turn the balance from 
failure to adapt, to successful adaptation. That is, 
things are not so very wrong, they are only a little 
wrong, and a little help in decision clears up the 
trouble. If this were the whole of the story, we 
could turn our problem over to these super-belief 
healing cults that use suggestion so successfully, 
and consider it solved. Upon this basis all super- 
belief healing cults are entitled to equal recognition 
and standing with orthodox medical science, and 
occultism to an honoured place beside a religion 
like historic Christianity. This would be to throw 
away the long progress of the centuries and to re- 
store occultism and superstition to their former 
supremacy. But the tariff which the intellect, feel- 
ings and will are compelled to pay upon the 
products of occultism and super-beliefs imported 
from the foreign realms of ultra-reason, or upon 
direct help contributed to one’s will in decision 
which is gained by way of the unconscious, when 
the reason is drugged by light hypnosis, is too high 
for the normal personality to think of paying. 

The Cost. When one consents to subject one’s 
self to the practice of even light hypnosis, and 


122 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


forms the habit of allowing the mind to slip into 
the vague, tranquillized state where it is blank, and 
so passive and open to suggestion, both the intel- 
lect and the will are further weakened. Now this 
is the trouble to be cured. By this practice the 
emotions gain a control which, under the inspira- 
tion of the imagination, leads back to a condition 
from which the human mind has been for cen- 
turies struggling to escape. In this condition, one 
is in danger of developing the habit of throwing 
the responsibility for decisions upon stronger wills. 
That is, suggestion aggravates the very trouble 
from which the neurosis comes. 

Second. Not only reason and will, but also con- 
Science is taken off guard when light hypnosis is 
produced. And the unconscious mind is much 
more susceptible to suggestion than the con- 
scious mind where reason and conscience are on 
guard. ‘This opens the way for breaking down all 
the normal moral defenses of character. Any 
psychologist who has had experience with hypno- 
tism is aware of this fact. Here is where lies one 
of the destructive perils of light wines and beer. 
Light intoxicating stimulants do not generally pro- 
duce heavy hypnosis, that is drunkenness, but they 
do produce exactly the same psychological state 
which we know as light hypnosis. And when this 
passive condition of intellect and will is obtained 
with reason and conscience both off duty, sugges- 
tion is in control. ‘The moral atmosphere where 
drinking and revelling are being indulged, is not of 
the most elevating, and the way is opened for de- 
signs and purposes which are not of the best, but 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 123 


against which the victim has no normal powers 
to resist. This explains why the first steps from 
chastity are often made when drinking is first in- 
dulged. 

All of these evils and temptations are present 
when spiritual healers induce light hypnosis as the 
preliminary necessity for their line of suggestion. 
Fortunately to-day the psychology of spiritual 
healing is so little understood by those who prac- 
tice it, and healers are generally so sincere, honour- 
able and benevolent in their interest, that this dan- 
gerous aspect of the practice has not produced 
much serious trouble. But it does not take the 
designing long to discover what is going on. 
Those who are familiar with the history of spirit- 
ism during the last half of the last century when 
it was on its second lap, know that this evil power 
of suggestion opened the way for temptations that 
demoralized the movement of that day and 
wrought its ruin. 

If such a powerful, mysterious and potent force 
as suggestion is to be employed at all, those who 
are allowed to use it should possess intelligent 
knowledge of the technic of its physiological and 
psychological nature, and be subject to responsible 
regulation by State or Federal authority. It is be- 
cause of the evil consequences accompanying the 
use of suggestion that many of the leading hypno- 
tists have abandoned hypnotism and the use of 
direct suggestion upon the will with the reason 
and conscience off duty, and taken up psycho- 
analysis. The psychoanalyst does not induce light 
hypnosis or endeavour to force his idea upon the 


124 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


patient’s mind to assist decision. This is what all 
neurotics long to have done for them. ‘They have 
a cowardly fear of making decisions, and physi- 
cians feel that it is a great mistake to encourage 
this desire. The analyst endeavours to lead his 
patient away from passive dependence and the 
receptive attitude induced by all suggestion systems, 
and compel him to use his own reason, powers of 
intelligent criticism, common sense, will and con- 
science. In other words, the effort is made to get 
the patient to start up his own human machinery, 
and let it do its own work. When this has been 
accomplished, the patient is capable of meeting the 
problems of life once more normally, which is, in- 
dependently and victoriously. Dr. Jung describes 
the system of analytical psychology thus: 


In psychoanalysis we are dependent upon the pa- 
tient and his judgment for the reason that the very 
nature of analysis consists in leading him to a knowl- 
edge of his own self. The principles of psychoanaly- 
sis are so entirely different from those of therapeutic 
suggestion that they are not comparable (Analytical 
Psychology, p. 208). 


The problem of spiritual healing is now clearly 
before us. Body, mind and spirit all combine to 
maintain health and produce disturbances which 
create ill-health. But of these disturbances, sev- 
enty-five per cent. are directly traceable to psycho- 
logical causes which upset both mind and body and 
thus produce functional diseases. Therefore in the 
adult as well as in the child, the care of the soul is 
three times as important as the care of the body. 

By common consent religion is by nature best 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 125 


adapted to furnish the soul with the nourishment, 
training, discipline and exercise necessary to keep 
it spiritually and morally fit. Mathematics, sci- 
ence and history throw a large balance on the side 
of the importance of religion. We have seen, and 
shall see further, that those who turn to super- 
belief cults are conscious of this religious need, 
which they have, for some thoughtless or foolish 
reason, denied their spirits. Having allowed a 
lifetime accumulation of inhibitions against the 
Church and historic Christianity to block the way 
for a return to these sources for help, these needy 
middle-lifers naturally turn to the occult. In the 
last chapter of The Non-Sense of Christian Sct- 
ence, we have analyzed the psychology of its appeal 
to this type of person. What is there said of 
Christian Science is in some degree true of all 
super-belief cults, they are ‘‘ Get-Truth-Happiness- 
Health-Quick Schemes.” The physically, intellec- 
tually, spiritually, or psychologically bankrupt 
middle-lifer needing speculative profits upon the 
little of life he has left to invest, is tempted to 
gamble. He needs the aid of the magical and the 
miraculous. 

But the miracles which these bankrupt middle- 
lifers desire wrought for their special benefit, can- 
not occur in this rational universe; this they know 
well, so they move over into the occult world 
where they are alleged to take place under the laws 
of its pseudo-science. If we have correctly ana- 
lyzed the nature of these super-belief cults, they 
lead us back to the pre-scientific age of magic. 
And we are not in ignorance of the moral and 


126 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


spfritual effects of this type of thing. Among all 
primitive races, magic has invariably produced a 
deterioration in the moral, spiritual and intellectual 
life of the people who have come under its spell, 
while theism has always elevated them. As some 
one has well said: ‘‘ One leads to deviltry and im- 
morality. The other slowly works the race up to 
higher planes of life and conduct. To put them 
upon the same level is to misinterpret the whole 
proofs of the racial beginnings of religion.” It is 
also to mistake the source of the power back of all 
spiritual and moral progress. Benevolent patron- 
age and over-generous toleration of these super- 
belief cults as legitimate and satisfactory substi- 
tutes for medical science, psychology and theism 
is based upon profound and unpardonable igno- 
rance of their true nature and history. If nothing 
better were within reach, such a practice might be 
excusable, but deliberately to disregard and ignore 
the mightiest and most wholesome preventive and 
restorative force of this character known in his- 
tory, is not fair either to the individual or society. 

During recent years medical science has been 
devoting its genius to working out preventive 
measures. ‘To its hospitals and sanitariums it has 
added its preventoriums. ‘To its Materia Medica 
it has added serums and antitoxins, to anatomy 
and physiology, hygiene and sanitation, to pepsin, 
prescribed diet and the balanced ration. If it be 
true that seventy-five per cent. of those who seek 
the aid of physicians are suffering from ailments 
which have a psychological origin, is it not time 
for society to turn its attention more determinedly 


THE SUPER-BELIEFS 127 


and intelligently to the subject of preventive meas- 
ures in this field? We believe that it can be 
scientifically demonstrated that the modern Chris- 
tian Church properly equipped and conducted in 
all of its departments of activity, developing the 
fourfold life—treligious, intellectual, moral, and 
social, cannot be equalled as a spiritual preven- 
torium. If physicians, psychologists and sociolo- 
gists should undertake to devise a preventorium 
for this very purpose they would be forced to 
duplicate the modern Christian Church, or provide 
some institution that is inferior. Is not consider- 
able of our present-day spiritual, moral and psy- 
chological trouble directly traceable to the fact that 
from sixty to eighty per cent. of the members of 
society, young and old, habitually absent them- 
selves from the Church’s worship and service? 
Thus their needy lives are robbed of the very pre- 
ventive and restorative spiritual forces which the 
Church is in a position to furnish. Our study of 
sub-belief, super-belief, occultism and _ spiritual 
healing has directed attention to the vast area of 
neglected spiritual life over which the occult still 
holds sway. That normal religious belief and re- 
ligious experience are the specifics for all troubles 
which spring up in this field, is what we hope to 
show in the next division of our subject. 


: 4 
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4 





PART III 
NORMAL RELIGIOUS BELIEF 





V 
BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 


\ ), y E now enter the third divisional area of 
our subject—Normal Religious Belief. 
Its attractive features never stand out 
quite so clearly as when directly contrasted with 
those of its chief rivals—the realms of sub-belief 
and super-belief. In the subcredian catacombs 
where chronic unbelievers dwell in the midst of 
the sepulchral remains of dead religious beliefs, we 
found the dark, sunless atmosphere so enervating 
that it taxed our spiritual vitality to the limit. 
Our short stay in the underground domain of un- 
belief was long enough to make us glad to return 
to the sunlit surface where faith and hope shine. 
In the second divisional area, we were trans- 
ported up into the dizzy, ethereal heights of the 
supercredian realm, above the reach of reason, in 
what is called the domain of ‘‘ Divine Truth ”—as 
though truth could be anything more or less than 
truth—where occultism casts its mysterious and 
magic shadow over all the landscape. Here we 
were compelled to breathe intellectual air so rarefied 
that reason itself is extracted from it. Naturally 
such rarefied air has a tendency to produce in nor- 
mal human beings a sense of dizziness in which 
one’s mental equilibrium is easily lost. Only those 
whose intellectual lungs and spiritual heart are 
strong, should linger long in such strange religious 
regions. It is as much of a relief to come down 
Ny? 


132 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


out of the clouds of misbelief into the natural 
realm of normal religious belief as it was to come 
up out of the subcredian realms of unbelief. There 
is no place like our spiritual homeland! 

Up to this time we have used the words normal 
religious belief without defining what we included 
in the idea, so that it now becomes necessary, be- 
fore we go farther, to mark off more distinctly 
the boundary of this third area. If sub-belief is 
believing less than normal and super-belief is be- 
lieving more than normal, what is normal religious 
belief? Who is to be the judge of what is 
normal? Instead of turning over this question to 
a small minority of experts, either theologians, 
scientists or philosophers, we propose to allow hu- 
manity as a whole to give the answer. No single 
group, however intelligent or honest, is capable of 
deciding this important question for their fellows. 
Humanity as a whole is the only unit in position 
to reach the truth. For it gathers up in its age- 
long racial inheritance the necessary data upon 
which to base a conclusion. Specialists are liable 
to exclude the testimony of those groups and in- 
dividuals against which they have prejudices. 
When humanity is made the judge, the child, the 
youth, the maiden, fathers, mothers, those in mid- 
die life, the aged, the ignorant, the learned, the 
rich, the poor, the good, the bad, the teachers, 
statesmen, physicians, scholars, missionaries, mer- 
chants, manufacturers, financiers, the labourer, the 
capitalist, every component part of society has a 
voice in the decision. 

selected groups are always partial, but a cross- 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 133 


section of humanity representing the same general 
type of civilization automatically decides what is 
its normal religious belief. The belief which the 
majority of this most inclusive group finds to be 
the most natural, reasonable and spiritually satisfy- 
ing for the maintaining of the ideals and social 
institutions of the civilization they have reached, 
together with the intellectual, moral, social and 
spiritual ideals and character of the individual, is 
the normal religious belief of this group. So far 
as Western civilization is concerned it is an indis- 
putable fact that in its most highly civilized nations 
the great majority of people find the religious be- 
lief in a Personal God such as the Bible declares 
and Jesus reveals, to be the most natural, reason- 
able and spiritually satisfying. The moment we 
descend into the subcredian beliefs or ascend up 
into supercredian beliefs we leave the majority 
and join some minority group. What type of 
civilization these minority groups would build, the 
history of ancient civilizations in which they had 
their chance has shown. Be that as it may, we 
are on firm historical and scientific ground when 
we affirm that belief in a Personal God such as 
the Bible declares and Jesus reveals, is the normal 
religious belief of Western civilization. There- 
fore this normal religious belief will claim our at- 
tention in this chapter. 

Let your minds be relieved at the outset of the 
fear that we are going to plunge you into a deep 
discussion of the theological aspects of this sub- 
ject. We are going to confine our study strictly 
to the psychological phases of the problem. And 


134 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


as the psychologist, for the last twenty-five years, 
has been trying hard to persuade the world to take 
him seriously as the only real theologian, we ought 
to have an interesting time. 

The psychological study of religion came into 
prominence in America in 1896, when Mr. James 
A. Leuba, then fellow in Clarke University, 
Worcester, Massachusetts, published the study of 
religious conversion with which we are already fa- 
miliar. The invasion of the religious realm by 
science is justified by the nature of psychology. 
Mr. Leuba says: 


The subjective facts of religion belong to psychol- 
ogy. It is the duty and privilege of that science to 
extend its beneficial sceptre over this realm. 


There can be no dispute over the claim that the 
subjective facts of religion belong to psychology, 
and that it is the duty and privilege of this branch 
of science to make its contribution to the cause of 
religion. We might credit psychology with a dis- 
interested scientific desire to assist the Church were 
it not for the next statement. Mr. Leuba adds: 


The time is particularly favourable for such an 
expansion; the power that ruled during the past cen- 
turies has grown senile, its authority is denied, and a 
painful anarchy prevails. Let psychology accept the 
succession that falls to it by right. 


This sounds very much like the premature 
obituary which the expectant heir to the throne 
might write for the still-reigning monarch. The 
designs which psychology has upon the throne of 
religious authority are clear. The Church has 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 135 


grown senile, its sceptre has actually fallen out of 
its palsied hand, and anarchy prevails. To save 
the day, and reéstablish order within the realm of 
religion, psychology—the legitimate heir of the 
kingdom of the Church—proposes “to accept the 
succession that falls to it by right.” From the 
very beginning it is evident that psychology has 
been inspired by the ambition to become the queen 
of sciences, to make its professors supersede the 
preachers of the Church as authorities in the realm 
of religion, and psychological assemblies take the 
place of religious services. And in the life of 
many educated moderns this dream of succession 
has been realized. To them a treatise on religion 
by a professor of psychology is the last word on 
theology, and the number of Sunday gatherings 
announced in the religious columns of the New 
York Saturday dailies, bearing a variety of psy- 
chological titles, indicates that psychological assem- 
blies are becoming increasingly popular as substi- 
tutes for Christian worship. 

Among the many advantages which are expected 
to result from this succession, Mr. Leuba calls 
our attention to this one: 


The soul midwifery now extensively, but igno- 
rantly, practised by revivalists and pastors could be 
based upon a positive knowledge of the psychology of 
regeneration. 


This introduces us to the main theme of the 
thesis, which is a study of religious conversion. At 
first we rather resented the suggestion that the 
queen of sciences should so soon be dragged down 


136 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


from her throne and set at work as a soul-mid- 
wife. But the delicate and regal task of soul mid- 
wifery is the most important in the world, at 
least when in charge of the queen of sciences. 
With “positive knowledge of the psychology of 
regeneration” the rebirth of souls should no 
longer be left in the hands of the bungling pastors 
and revivalists. Spiritual birth control should be- 
come an established reality in the Church, and the 
supply of converts reduced to scientific regulation. 
Converts can thus be made to order out of any 
human material the preacher may have on hand, 
provided the psychologist is given time enough to 
produce them. ‘This idea held attractive possi- 
bilities for ambitious pastors whose annual report 
of additions to the Church needed decided boosting 
or padding. 

Experience has revealed one serious defect in 
this very scientific and clever scheme. Wherever 
a professor of psychology has taken over the man- 
agement of the religious life of an individual or 
group, arid psychological assemblies have been sub- 
stituted for religious worship, the control has been 
present but the rebirths have been absent. 
Wherever this type of scientific psychology has 
been given full sway, the birth rate of souls has 
rapidly declined, the very regeneration it was to 
regulate has ceased to function, and one of the 
most distinctive types of religious experience has 
gradually become extinct. We who are psychol- 
ogists are convinced that this suicidal practice is 
not due to psychology. In some way the net re- 
sults of the experiment seem to indicate that the 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 137 


psychologist has bungled the profession of soul 
midwifery even more clumsily than the pastor and 
the revivalist. 

To the pastor and the Church, this defect is 
vital; to the psychologist it is a mere incident not 
worthy of consideration. As soon as the old 
species of convert disappears from the religious 
realm, the psychologist removes the label “ re- 
ligious”’ from its dead body and stamps it upon 
the remnants of moral consciousness which yet 
survives from the racial inheritance, and proclaims 
these the only important subjective facts of re- 
ligious consciousness anyway. ‘Thus an entirely 
new type of religious personality is brought into 
existence. We will allow Mr. Leuba to describe 
it. He says: 


Religious men there are, who have no belief in an 
interfering Providence, and consequently none in 
prayer. Responsibility they feel toward none but 
themselves, and those affected by their doings. Im- 
mortality of the “ego” they possibly cannot even 
hope for. Adoration, worship, devotion, piety in the 
common acceptance of the term, are incompatible 
with these negations. Outwardly they have no cult, 
return no thanks, and ask for nothing from the pow- 
ers of the world, for they know them to be deaf to 
such supplication and insensible to human thankful- 
ness. The most exalted religious consciousness is 
consistent with the negative intellectual creed sketched 
above (American Journal of Psychology, Vol. VII). 


It may be true that “the most exalted religious 
consciousness is consistent with the negative in- 
tellectual creed sketched above,” but this all de- 
pends upon one’s definition of religion. One thing is 


138 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


certain those religious experiences which Professor 
James has selected for study in his Varieties of 
Religious Experience, and those religious person- 
alities which the Bible and religious history have 
been in the habit of featuring as most typical are 
all excluded. If one starts the study of religion 
with this body of data eliminated, it is quite simple 
to build up an entirely new type of religion. We 
have taken the pains to outline a few of the ideas 
with which psychology started its study of religion. 
If one will examine the quotations above given 
from Mr. Leuba’s maiden thesis in the psychology 
of religion it will be apparent that the atheistic and 
humanistic theories which are so valiantly defended 
in Professor Leuba’s recent books, A Psychological 
Study of Religion, and The Belief in God and Im- 
mortality are already accepted as the basis of pro- 
cedure at the outset, and are not the result of years 
of investigation within the field of psychology of 
religion. In the study of Religious Conversion, as 
the letters which we have in our possession show, 
Mr. Leuba first eliminated the distinctively re- 
ligious elements which the writers all included, and 
confined his study to another class of psychological 
experiences. When Professor William James 
published his Varieties of Religious Experience, 
Professor Leuba wrote a long critical review of 
this book, selecting out this religious factor which 
Professor James included and gave first place, and 
endeavoured to prove that Professor James had 
erred in recognizing its reality. At the very be- 
ginning of his study of the subject of religious 
phenomena Professor Leuba was the victim of a 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 139 


complex which influenced his motived-will-to-think 
and hopelessly biased his selective attention in 
gathering facts for consideration. His failure to 
overcome this trauma, or life-wound, which caused 
a maladjustment in his life toward the religion 
of historical Christianity, has made him a chronic 
unbeliever. 

In The Belief in God and Immortality, he tells 
us that 86.8 of the eminent psychologists in this 
country are afflicted with the same unfortunate 
malady. Consequently they also suffer, as do all 
of their pupils, from the same perverted point of 
view. ‘These eminent psychologists are perfectly 
honest in their belief that they have given religion 
a fair and unbiased chance to prove the existence 
of an objective God. They have searched the 
historical origins of religious customs, rites and 
ceremonies, they have analyzed the conscious and 
the unconscious mind and they find no disturb- 
ances either in thought, feeling or will which can 
be stamped as clearly indicating the presence of 
Deity operating in human personality. These 
findings are of great value; they are psycholog- 
ically correct as far as they go. But why expect 
to find “special disturbances’? when God always 
works through the natural channels of the uni- 
verse and personality to accomplish His purposes? 
That some vital factor in religious experience has 
eluded the analysis of these psychologists is now 
becoming very evident. The characteristic of 
twentieth century science is the discovery of forces 
and elements whose existence the nineteenth 
century scientists failed to find. 


140 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


The late Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz in an 
article in Harpers’ Magazine, entitled Science and 
Religion, gives a good illustration of this point. 
He says: 


In studying the transformations of matter, the 
chemist records them by equations of the form: 

(1) 2He + O02 =2H,O0 . . 

For nearly a hundred years chemists wrote and 
accepted this equation ; innumerable times it has been 
experimentally proven by combining 4 parts of hydro- 
gen and 32 parts of oxygen to 36 parts of water 
vapour; so that this chemical equation would appear 
as correct and unquestionable as anything can be. 

Nevertheless, it is wrong, or rather incomplete. It 
does not give the whole event, but omits an essential 
part of it, and now we write it: 

(2) 2He + Og = 2HeO + 203,000 J. which means: 

The matter and the energy of 2 gram molecules of 
hydrogen, and the matter and energy of 8 gram mole- 
cules of oxygen, combine to the matter and energy of 
2 gram molecules of water vapour and 293, 000 joules, 
or units, of free energy. 


Dr. Steinmetz points out that because this “ free 
energy ” appeared as flame, heat, mechanical force, 
when these chemical elements were put together, it 
was regarded as a mere incident. But it is now 
recognized that “ energy” is an essential part of 
matter. A similar discovery has been made by 
psychologists concerning the emotions in person- 
ality. Until recently, they, like free energy, were 
disregarded as incidental accompaniments of cer- 
tain psychological states. The discovery of the 
unconscious mind has established them as an 
elemental part of the psychological phenomena in 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 141 


which they appear. Omit them, and you no longer 
have the same psychological states. Scientific 
dieticians for years thought they knew all of the 
elements in food. But long experimenting at last 
revealed the presence of vitamin, an hitherto un- 
discovered food element, whose presence is neces- 
sary for health. Like the free energy of the chem- 
ist and the emotions of the psychologists, vita- 
min was always present and operating, but un- 
discovered. And now Einstein appears upon the 
scene with his theory of Relativity and caps the 
climax of the discovery of the hitherto unknown 
forces in the universe by pointing out that mass, 
equality, gravitation, time and space are all pos- 
sessed of factors not yet recognized by science. 
These discoveries have made the great scientists 
very humble. ‘The universe constructed upon the 
theories of nineteenth century science no longer 
exists for the modern scientist. The next great 
discovery of the unknown may be that of the 
“Unknown God.” 

The trend of modern scientific discoveries 
during the last twenty years has all been in this 
direction. Whatever modification of Einstein’s 
theory of relativity finally forces its way into 
modern scientific conceptions, there will never be 
a complete return to the pre-Einstein scientific 
universe. His theories will no doubt undergo as 
radical changes as Darwin’s theory of evolution, 
but the new theories will all be coloured by his 
discoveries. And this newly constructed scientific 
universe, which has been on the way for many 
years, gives God as good a standing-ground as any 


142 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


of the facts of science which are back of the 
visible and invisible universe. And this is all that 
the theologian has a right to ask of material 
science and psychology. One fact which is now 
established is that the new epistomology lays down 
as the condition of any observed fact that con- 
tribution made by the observer. The frame of 
reference in which the observer is located alters 
the character of his observations. The non- 
religious scientist is simply out of the frame of 
reference so that the psychological data of actual 
experience are not within his range of observation 
or knowledge. 

Therefore the irreligious psychologist is forced 
to borrow all of his data from the dead experiences 
of others. What they recall, what they have re- 
flected upon, what has been embalmed in a book, 
is taken into the laboratory and dissected and ex- 
amined. This is important. But it seriously 
limits the field of knowledge of the non-believer. 
Biological facts are as important to this field of 
study as dead experiences. And these are always 
obtained through the examination of living organ- 
isms and living experience. Those in whose life 
religion is actually functioning in its normal 
manner, and who supplement this religious ex- 
perience by a study of other lives in which it is 
also naturally functioning, possess first hand bio- 
logical data. Evelyn Underhill says: 


Indeed, all who are not thoroughgoing materialists 
must regard the study of the spiritual life as in the 
truest sense a department of biology; and any ac- 
count of man which fails to describe it, as incomplete. 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 143 


Where the science of the body is studied, the science 
of the soul should be studied too (The Life of the 
Spirit and the Life of To-day, p. 245). 


Many years before Einstein pointed out the 
contribution of the observer to the correct knowl- 
edge of any fact, Professor James insisted upon 
this truth at least within the range of those facts 
which deal with sentiments and emotions. He 
said: 

In all matters of sentiment one must have “ been 
there” one’s self in order to understand them. 


One can never fathom an emotion or divine its dic- 
tates by standing outside it (Op. cit., p. 325). 


In another place he extends this idea to cover 
the difference between perception and reflection. 
He remarks: 


There is in the living act of perception always 
something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be 
caught, and for which reflection comes too late (Op. 
cit., p. 457). 


If this point is well taken, the less religious a 
person, the less qualified is he to comprehend the 
mysteries of religious experience; and the more 
religious a person is, the more readily will he be 
able to fathom them. ‘This principle is in strict 
accord with all art and science. So that by the 
terms laid down by science, the non-religious per- 
son is ruled out as unqualified to understand the 
nature of the genuine, first-hand data of religious 
experience. His handicap cannot be overcome, 
save through some vital religious experience. 
Along this same line M. Bergson says: | 


144 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


If intellect is charged with matter and instinct with 
life, we must squeeze them both in order to get the 
double essence from them (Creative Evolution, p. 


178). 


The discovery of the unconscious mind has 
brought the previously despised “ instinct” to the 
fore again. We are now told that “the story of 
the life of man and the story of the life of mind 
begin with instincts.” Biology and psychology 
start with instincts as the racial inheritances with 
which the human being is endowed. ‘These in- 
stincts are found stored away for safe keeping in 
the depository of the unconscious mind. In the 
biology of the physical life, the mental life, the 
moral life, they are given first place. In the biol- 
ogy of the spiritual life they have not yet come 
into their own. ‘This is destined to be the next 
field for investigation. Let us survey it. 

When we squeeze instinct, in addition to the 
physical, mental and moral urges which come forth 
and are found to be parts of the libido, or desire, 
there also oozes out an insatiable longing of the 
human spirit for a larger, fuller, spiritual life. 
This elemental instinct pushes the heavily, racially 
burdened human spirit forward in three distinct 
directions—the intellectual, the social, the moral. 
And in none of these lines is this spirit satisfied 
with the humanistic limitations which psychology 
and sociology have sought to impose upon it. 
Fach of these urges introduces a new creative 
element into the life of the individual. These 
urges of the spirit are the mightiest of all those 
which have become historically recognized. They 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 145 


command: the physical, mental and moral urges 
obey. This instinct gives the human spirit no 
rest until its cravings for a fuller life in all three 
departments is seriously striven for, and in an in- 
creasing degree realized. ‘The degree of peace and 
satisfaction which a human being experiences cor- 
responds to the measure of this attainment. This 
is what the psychologist has in mind when work- 
ing for the unification of life. But he fails to per- 
ceive that this unification cannot be successfully 
gained save as each aspect of the psychic life— 
thought, feeling and will are satisfied in a larger 
than individual, larger than social way. ‘This 
urge of the spirit demands cosmic unification. 
And this can never be attained without the help 
of Monotheism. 

The greatest modern philosophers have not over- 
looked this cosmic urge. Professor Eucken in a 
lecture, which the author had the privilege of 
hearing him deliver at the Yale Club in 19138, 
among other things said: 


The chasm between the finite and infinite is bridged 
by inner life, which is in relation to both. 
Man is thus clearly discerning his kinship with uni- 
versal life. He is a voluntary coodperator in the 
movement of the universe which is toward spiritual 
life. There is a coherent relation. If man were but a 
part of this great materialistic evolution, a cog in the 
machine, it would be folly for him to attempt to lift 
himself above it, and try to change things, and thus 
aspire to spiritual perfection. 

As a matter of fact man has at no sphere in life 
accepted a ready-made, appointed place, that he must 
be content with. He has always felt himself superior, 


146 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


and as a superior being he has set himself to changing 
things and making them better. This is the secret of 
all progress. The desire to make things better, and 
man’s feeling that it is possible. 


In a remarkable essay on Reflex Action and 
Theism, Professor James makes this interesting 
statement about God. He says: 


Into this debate about his existence, I will not 
pretend to enter. I must take up humbler ground, 
and limit my ambition to showing that a God, whether 
existent or not, is at all events the kind of being 
which, if he did exist, would form the most adequate 
possible object for minds framed like our own to 
conceive as lying at the root of the universe. My 
thesis, in other words, is this: that some outward 
reality of a nature defined as God’s nature must be 
defined, is the only ultimate object that is at the same 
time rational and possible for the human mind’s con- 
templation. Anything short of God 1s not rational, 
anything more than God is not possible, if the human 
mind be in truth the triadic structure of impression, 
reflection, and reaction, which we at the outset al- 
lowed (The Will to Believe, etc., p. 116). 


Given the human mind constructed as psychol- 
ogy agrees it is constructed, on this triadic struc- 
ture with which we have been dealing, Professor 
James concludes: “ Anything short of God is not 
rational, anything more than God is not possible.” 
We might accept this statement as sufficient for 
psychology. But this is only our starting point. 
We now wish to show that every great historical 
religion, every parasitic religion, every scientific 
substitute for religion, is forced to make some 
provision which will recognize the three instinctive 
urges which the triadic structure of the human 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 147 


mind creates. They are personalized in the Chris- 
tian doctrine of the Trinity, and they form the 
basis for the three normal religious beliefs which 
give the subjects of this division of our study. 
This may seem a long way around to arrive at our 
subject—Belief in a Personal God. But the 
human spirit leads the psychologist by this route. 

Why does the chronic unbeliever deny the exist- 
ence of a Personal God? ‘To give him full credit 
for sincerity, he honestly believes that his scientific 
knowledge has made such belief impossible. But 
the psychologist knows that this is not the real 
reason. For some reason, he has lost his religious 
belief in a Personal God, and is compelled to seek 
some other cosmic substitute for it that will ap- 
pease the irresistible instinctive urge of his spirit 
for a satisfactory relation with the cosmic reality 
in which he finds himself such a very small factor. 
The scientific theory, or faith, that this is a 
rational universe governed by law offers him the 
most intellectually satisfying substitute within his 
grasp, and it promises him the best security. One 
fact only mars the peace of the irreligious scientific 
mind; it is the belief in the existence of an om- 
nipotent, omniscient Personal God at large in this 
law-governed universe. A God with whom His 
Children can communicate through prayer. A 
God who answers prayer. You will notice that 
Professor Leuba gives this secret away in his 
maiden thesis in the passage already quoted, when 
he remarks: “‘ who have no belief in an interfering 
Providence and consequently none in prayer.” 
The presence of an omnipotent God in this uni- 


148 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


verse upsets all the calculations of the materialist’s 
scientifically established relations to reality. The 
peace of mind which scientific faith brings, is dis- 
turbed when it encounters an “ interfering God.” 
Therefore the chronic unbeliever strives to get 
back his peace of mind by denying the existence 
of this disturbing God. As soon as he has done 
this in thoroughgoing fashion, his inner life is 
somewhat unified, and a certain kind of peace of 
mind is obtained. 

If one’s problem is moral, as was Nietzsche’s, 
the same tactics are used. ‘The moral issue, in 
spite of every attempt to reduce it to purely social 
dimensions, is ultimately cosmic. And every 
living soul feels this deep down in the heart. The 
moral imperative has its ultimatum resolved into 
two alternatives: Either my will or ‘ Thine” be 
done. Ina civilization where the normal religious 
belief is monotheistic, there is no escape from the 
surrender of one’s will to the righteous demands of 
a Sovereign God, except through virtual denial of 
His sovereignty or existence. The chronic, unre- 
pentant sinner saves his spiritual life from com- 
plete disorganization by denying the existence of 
God. Nietzsche kept incessantly reiterating the 
words: “God is dead. God is dead.” Brought 
up in a Christian home, he was forced to keep this 
idea in the foreground of consciousness to keep 
up his fight against Christianity. But the strain 
was too much for his mind. Had he not come 
from a Christian home, with high moral ideals and 
strong religious faith, his fight would not have 
‘ been so fierce, or so disastrous. 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 149 


Here is another angle of this same truth. Why 
did Mrs. Eddy deny the existence of the material 
universe? For the very same psychological reason 
that the materialist, the chronic unbeliever, and 
the chronic sinner, deny the existence of God. 
There is always some cosmic urge in the back- 
ground of such radical denials. The new scien- 
tific theories which were raging around New Eng- 
land in her early years, upset all of her inherited 
religious beliefs. But this new science was even 
more incomprehensible to her untutored mind than 
the old Calvinistic theology which it attacked. 
And she believed there were many others in the 
same predicament. So she chooses the other horn 
of the dilemma, and straightens out her intellectual 
and spiritual perplexities by denying the existence 
of the very material universe which modern science 
was making such a disturbing reality. This course 
is as natural and as psychologically justifiable as 
the course which the chronic unbeliever and atheist 
adopt. And it brings the same unification of per- 
sonality and peace of mind,—and no more. 

Why does the spiritist force himself to believe 
in spirit communication? He honestly believes 
that his knowledge of the scientific proofs of 
spirit communication compel this belief. But as 
we have already shown, this evidence is powerless 
in itself to make converts. The real psychological 
reason for adopting this belief is because his 
spiritual concern has been suddenly extended be- 
yond the limits of self and society, the range of 
humanism, by the death of a very dear loved one. 
It now has cosmic dimensions and it must have a 


150 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


costnic faith to support it. ‘The mourner has lost 
his faith in a Personal God which is the natural 
bridge over this great chasm between this world 
and the next, and his acute, tragic bereavement re- 
quires some substitute belief which will satisfy the 
grieving spirit, and give some hope of immortality. 
Whittier could sing: 
I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care. 

To one who can say even that, this religious 
faith is sufficient. It is cosmic, it is personal. 
But the spiritist is always a person who has lost 
this faith. Scientific faith has no comfort to 
furnish. Its creed is annihilation of individuality. 
Spiritism is another curious blend of science and 
religion, obtained by sacrificing the essential char- 
acteristics of both. It retains the names only, and 
for those who can accept this as a science and a 
religion, it brings some comfort. It makes no 
demand on religious faith. It produces the de- 
parted spirit and allows the mourner to communi- 
cation with him. This procedure it styles psychic 
science. It bridges the chasm between the finite 
and the infinite, this life and the next, through the 
medium and the control. ‘The cosmic urge which 
is back of spiritual healing we will take up in the 
chapter on prayer. 

Is it not curious how closely sub-belief and 
super-beliefs hang together from whatever angle 
they are viewed? All the essential varieties of 
cosmic faith in which the human spirit is led to 


} 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 151 


put its trust are before us. Remaining systems 
represent some variation or blend of these. The 
pure scientific faith—materialism and humanism 
—denies the existence of God to get a right of way 
for science. It is born out of a lack of faith in the 
dependability of Personality in God. Its weak 
spot is in the spiritual or moral life of the in- 
dividual. The pure idealistic faith—such as 
Christian Science—has for its background a lack 
of faith in human reason. Its weak spot is always 
intellectual inability to master the scientific ex- 
planation of the universe and the philosophical 
relation between mind and matter. The intellec- 
tually strong and the spiritually weak prefer to 
take a chance on the side of science and human 
reason. ‘The intellectually weak prefer to take a 
chance on the side of super-belief religious cults. 
Between these two extremes are myriads of blends 
with these two points of view. Some with the 
balance turning in favour of science, and some in 
favour of religion, All such systems have the 
same fatal defect, they are one-sided. They do 
not include the whole of reality. To deny the 
objective reality of the material universe is to leave 
out one element in the cosmos which we human 
beings cannot ignore. To deny the objective 
reality of the spiritual universe is to leave out one 
of the essential elements of reality of which we 
are a conscious part. No such bisected reality 
will permanently satisfy the cosmic urge of the 
human spirit. M. Bergson has well said: 


The metaphysician that we each carry uncon- 
sciously within us . . . has its fixed require- 


152 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


ments, its ready-made explanations, its irreducible 
propositions (Creative Evolution, p. 17). 

It is with this “ metaphysician that we carry 
unconsciously within us’ that we are now reckon- 
ing. All of its fixed requirements sooner or later 
must be met. By administering liberal doses of 
the anesthetic of utilitarianism or emotionalism it 
is possible to dope this metaphysician-within-us for 
atime. But the narcotic wears off, and the meta- 
physician-within-us awakens to demand with in- 
creasing insistence that its rightful requirements 
be satisfied. The individual does not always have 
a part in this awakening, but society and civiliza- 
tions do. That interpretation of the universe 
alone can survive and triumph which does full 
justice to the whole of reality, and thereby satis- 
fies the threefold urge of the instinctive human 
spirit. ‘That the Christian idea of God fulfills all 
of these requirements more perfectly than any 
other conception, we believe can be rationally and 
scientifically proven. In concluding this chapter 
let us note a few reasons. 

First. It offers a rational interpretation of the 
universe without denying the existence of, or cur- 
tailing in any degree, the objective reality of the 
material universe and the reign of law; and, with- 
out denying the existence of, or curtailing in any 
degree, the objective reality of the spiritual world. 
It makes its Personal God the creator of matter 
and spirit, the ruler of heaven and earth. 

Second. It insists that any ultimate explana- 
tion of reality, the reality which the facts of 
science—especially biology, sociology, and psychol- 


BELIEF IN A PERSONAL GOD 153 


ogy—treveal, must be reduced to terms of Pur- 
posive Good Will. And Purposive Good Will, 
beginning with capitals, involves Personality. 
Third. It insists that in the last analysis Per- 
sonality is far more dependable and satisfying as 
a cosmic conception to the human spirit than 
either Principle or Law. It is not subjected to the 
rigid mechanical limitations of these ideas, it is 
elastic, resourceful, creative. The psychologist 
cannot help reminding the materialist that the 
thing which most fascinates him in the new scien- 
tific conception of the universe is not the reign of 
law, but the underlying conviction that knowledge 
and mastery of the secrets of nature offer to 
human personality control over this law and in- 
finite possibilities of creative progress. And this 
in its last analysis, is faith in benevolent person- 
ality, not individual, but cosmic. ‘The easiest and 
most natural transition for the human spirit from 
the finite to the infinite, from the seen to the un- 
seen, from the temporal to the eternal, from matter 
to mind, from mind to matter, is through the con- 
ception of a Personal God. ‘There is no possible 
escape from dualism, if matter and mind are both 
to be accorded their legitimate place in this uni- 
verse, except through the conception of a Personal 
God. For in personality alone do mind and mat- 
ter function together with mind progressively in 
the ascendency. In a universe where personality 
is becoming increasingly dominant, controlling and 
creative, nothing below personality, nothing less 
controlling and creative than personality, nothing 
as little as human personality, nothing as enmeshed 


154 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


in the material universe as mere humanity, noth- 
ing that so easily can furnish materialists and 
idealists with opposing theories, can hope per- 
manently to hold the intelligent faith and respect 
of the developing human spirit. The conception 
of a Personal God such as Jesus Christ presents 
satisfies both the instinctive urges of the human 
spirit and its most highly developed intellectual, 
spiritual, moral and psychological needs. It 
seems to be the very truth of reality for which 
the human spirit hungers and thirsts. The 
Psalmist was a keen psychologist when he cried 
out: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, 
so panteth my soul after thee, O God” (Psalm 
42:1), 

Let us return again to Professor James’ psy- 
chological analysis of this truth. He says: 


A God, whether existent or not, is at all events the 
kind of being which, if he did exist, would form the 
most adequate possible object for minds framed like 
our own to conceive as lying at the root of the uni- 
verse. My thesis, in other words, is this: 
Anything short of God is not rational, anything more 
than God is not possible (The Will to Believe, p. 


115). 


The science of psychology in this statement 
comes very close to checking up in its conclusions 
with the passage in Genesis which says: “ So God 
created man in his own image, in the image of God 
created he him” (Gen. 1: 27). 

Upon this point, science and religion are in 
agreement. 


Vi 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 


ARLYLE in his essay on The Signs of the 
Times, arraigns the political philosophy 


of his day because it addresses itself to 
the primary, unmodified forces and energies of 
man which spring from pure selfishness. Its 
fundamental principle he states thus: 


Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. 
Good government is a good balancing of these: and 
except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, re- 
quires no virtue in any quarter. 


In 1912, Professor Rudolf Eucken wrote a little 
book entitled Back to Religion. In it he shows 
that the complete secularization of modern life has 
opened the way “ for a man to make his highest 
aim his own personal advancement and utmost 
selfish gain, in total unconcern for any one else ” 
(See p. 18). As long as this “utmost selfish 
gain”’ aim is confined to the struggles of a few 
isolated individuals, society is able to absorb its 
poison, and no serious social consequences result. 
But when Professor Eucken noticed that these 
same selfish principles which controlled individual 
conduct were gradually being extended to political, 
business, labour groups and to national ideals, he 
became alarmed. ‘Trusts and combinations give 
expression to them in the capitalistic groups, 
unions in labour groups, and nationalism in 
nations. Like Carlyle he cries out: 

155 


156 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


Self-interest is the single rule of action, the moral 
solidarity of mankind is relaxed and dissolved. The 
danger is imminent that the end may be a war of all 
against all (Bellum omnium contra omnes) (Op. cit., 


Doren 


Within two years of this warning, the World 
War was raging, and one nation was pressing its 
utmost selfish gain against the world in total un- 
concern for every other nation’s rights. Pro- 
fessor Eucken lived in a nation where the principle 
of self-interest had been exalted into a national 
ideal, and he saw the danger ahead. But no in- 
stinct is as blind and unreasonable as selfishness. 
The ordinary human powers never have been able 
successfully to cope with it. 

Now that the war is over, self-interest has made 
impossible a satisfactory peace. And even. in 
America where international strife does not dis- 
turb, the industrial war and the profiteers’ war “ of 
all against all” is raging. No permanent peace 
will be secured as long as each group sets its own 
personal advancement and utmost selfish gain 
above all else. As a great philosopher, Professor 
Fucken came to the conclusion that religion was 
the only power known to the human mind which 
possesses the ability to grapple successfully with 
the elemental selfishness in the heart of man. 
Therefore he started the slogan: “ Back to Re- 
ligion.” We have already noted some of the in- 
dividual consequences which have resulted from 
unbelief and misbelief. But before our age will 
ever rally around the standard of normal religious 
belief, it will have to be shown that cutting normal 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 157 


religion out of the life of the individual leads to 
serious social consequences. For, if this religion 
is the vitamin of the spirit of man, this fact should 
become manifest in the life of the social organism 
as well as in the organism of human personality. 
Let us therefore take a little time to examine the 
present-day problems of the three fundamental in- 
stitutions of civilized society—The State, The 
Church, The Home. ! 

The State. When the controlling political 
philosophy of an age or nation assumes that “ Men 
are to be guided only by their self-interests,” and 
that “good government is a good balancing of 
these,’ statesmen have a right to become concerned 
for the fate of the civilization of that age, or the 
life of that nation. Democracy, at least, cannot 
hope to survive under such conditions, for its very 
life-principles are bound up with the general wel- 
fare. In America of late the old principle that 
“good government” is a good balancing of self- 
interests has created an entirely new phase of 
political manipulation. Political leaders no longer 
are content to win votes one by one through in- 
telligent and conscientious appeal to patriotic prin- 
ciples. They go after them en bloc. The labour 
bloc, the farm bloc, the capitalistic bloc, the wet 
bloc, the dry bloc, the veterans’ bloc, the Western 
bloc, the Southern bloc, etc., etc. The single 
motive to which this new bloc system of political 
manipulation appeals is self-interest. The sinister 
nature of the system lies in the fact that the mem- 
bers of each bloc farm out their personal moral, 
political and patriotic conscience to the leaders of 


158 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


the bloc. They vote as a unit because it is to the 
interest of the bloc. And the bloc is a bloc of 
individual self-interests. During the recent elec- 
tion in New ‘York State, the writer knows a life- 
long prohibitionist who voted for Governor 
Smith, an out and out wet, simply because he 
belonged to a labour union, and the labour bloc 
was urged to vote for Smith. When loyalty to 
one’s bloc swallows up one’s moral and patriotic 
principles, democracy is transformed into an 
oligarchy which barters its principles for selfish- 
ness. And in any nation in which it is possible suc- 
cessfully to manipulate and carry political elections 
and secure legislative enactments of grave signif- 
icance to the national character by the bloc system, 
self-interest has already become the controlling 
political philosophy of the people. And some 
modern Thomas Moore might well sing: 


While yet upon Columbia’s rising brow 

The snowy smile of young presumption plays, 
Her bloom is poison’d and her heart decays! 
Even now in dawn of life, her sickly breath 
Burns with the taint of empires near their death. 


The true patriot cannot afford to close his 
eyes to the pernicious nature of this new develop- 
ment in political and legislative manipulation. So 
far as our great statesmen are concerned, they are 
all beginning to realize that a different spirit must 
be fostered in the affairs of State and industry if 
democracy is to survive. With striking unanimity 
they are turning to the same source for help to 
which Carlyle and Professor Eucken summoned 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 159 


their readers. The England of Carlyle’s day and 
the Germany of Professor Eucken’s day refused to 
heed the warnings of their spiritual prophets, and 
both nations have had to pay the price of their 
spiritual and moral blindness. What will America’s 
response be? A few months before his death the 
late President Harding uttered these. memorable 
words: 


In spite of our complete divorcement of Church 
and State, quite in harmony with our religious free- 
dom, there is an important relationship between 
Church and nation, because no nation can survive if 
it.ever forgets Almighty God... . | Ji I were to 
utter a prayer for the republic to-night it would be to 
reconsecrate us in religious devotion, and make us 
abidingly a God-fearing people, a God- -loving peo- 
DICH: 
The failures of the past invariably have been pre- 
ceded by contempt for the law, by spiritual paralysis 
and moral looseness, all of which had their earlier 
reflex in the weakened influence of the Church. We 
know the helpful, exalting influence of our religious 
institutions. We shall be made stronger as they be- 
come stronger. 


Religion is the only power known to humanity 
equal to sublimating this instinct of selfishness to 
the heights of patriotic loyalty and service. This 
is why all psychologists recognize its biological 
value. 

The Church. ‘The second social institution 
which is having many serious problems to-day is 
The Church. We are not so surprised to find the 
“secularizing of life” which Professor Eucken 
has characterized as the dominant spirit of the age, 


160 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


worming its way into the affairs of State, but we 
should hardly expect it to invade the sacred pre- 
cincts of the Church whose Lord stressed service. 
Yet the most distinctive forward movements of the 
Church which have been organized in late years 
have been surcharged with the spirit of the age 
which puts its trust in money and machinery. 
The materialistic spirit of our day seems to believe 
that ecclesiastical machinery will generate spiritual 
power. Whereas ecclesiastical machinery is a 
consumer, not a producer, of spiritual power. It 
is a useful and efficient distributer of spiritual 
power, but it does not generate such power. It 
takes more spiritual power to run a large church 
plant with much machinery and many social activi- 
ties than to run a small one with less machinery to 
keep revolving and less social activity to keep up to 
the high Christian standard. But it is difficult to 
impress this truth upon the modern mind. 

Even as ardent an apostle of spiritual values as 
Roger W. Babson, the statistician, has not escaped 
its perils. In a recent article in The Continent, 
he says: 


The Church is wondering why it is losing its grip 
on the masses. It wonders why lodges, mutual bene- 
fit associations, insurance companies and other or- 
ganizations are growing so rapidly while the Church 
is lagging behind. One real reason is that the Church 
is using outgrown methods to reach the people, while 
lodges and mutual benefit associations are using mod- 
ern insurance methods. 


Of course, Mr. Babson has not taken the trouble 
to orient these ideas to his own deep faith in 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 161 


spiritual values, or he would see how subversive 
they are to his own true position. Mutual benefit 
associations and insurance methods make a direct 
appeal to self-interest. They are in strict accord 
with the spirit of the age. But the Church is 
committed to the spirit of self-sacrifice and service. 
It cannot serve two masters. It cannot success- 
fully serve God and mammon. In attempting to 
serve both, it always loses the help of each. It 
must choose this day whom it will serve. The issue 
is clear-cut: It must appeal to self-interest and 
temporal securities or to self-sacrifice and service. 
The first appeals to the immediate motive, and to 
what Carlyle characterizes as “the primary, un- 
modified forces and energies of man which spring 
from pure selfishness.”’ It accepts humanity as it 
is, and is content to let it remain on this lower 
level. The second appeals to the struggling urges 
of the human spirit in their fight for victory over 
the material world, which seeks their life. It be- 
lieves in moral and spiritual progress and refuses 
to accept human nature as it is, as the highest 
achievement of the human soul. Its task is sub- 
limation of the ego. It throws out its challenge 
to the higher nature of man, and is constantly sur- 
prised by the responses which it receives. Jesus 
had no hesitation in making His choice. He be- 
lieved in, and appealed unreservedly to, the highest 
in man. At the very outset of His ministry He 
said: 


Whosoever will come after me, let him deny him- 
self, take up his cross and follow me. For whoso- 


162 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


ever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever 
shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, the 
same shall save it (Mark 8: 35-30). 


Those who are His disciples have already made 
the choice which discipleship demands, and so 
should His Church. When it remains unswerv- 
ingly loyal to the principles of Jesus Christ, the 
Church will be in a position to assist the State in 
its struggle against the disastrous spread of the 
principle of self-interest. 

The Home. ‘The home is the most elemental 
of all the social institutions of civilized society. 
Here, if anywhere, we should expect to find the 
disintegrating force of self-interest rigidly ex- 
cluded. If it should happen to creep in through 
the developing life of the children, it should never 
be allowed to disturb the mutual relations between 
husband and wife. Yet the divorce court fur- 
nishes an alarming record of the breakdown of the 
marriage relation and the break-up of the home. 
No phase of American life is causing more genuine 
concern than the present status of the marriage re- 
lation. Judge Lindsey of the Denver Domestic 
Relations Court, speaking in New York City re- 
cently, expressed himself as very pessimistic over 
the situation. He pronounced marriage a broken 
reed, and an institution which has collapsed under 
the strain of modern conditions. During the last 
four years, the relation between marriages and 
divorces has changed from four to one to two to 
one. Since 1890, a radical change has taken 
place. 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 163 


Many remedies are suggested. It is urged that 
if it were made harder to get married and easier 
to get a divorce the situation would be improved. 
Judge Grant of Boston, President of Harvard 
Alumni Association, advocates the establishment 
of uniform Federal marriage and divorce laws. 
There is no doubt that there are important changes 
needed along these lines. Judge Lindsey regards 
the economic independence of women one of the 
vital reasons for the present state of affairs, 
and he does not see how under the conditions 
of modern civilization marriage can be saved. It 
is not our purpose to enter upon a discussion of 
the general phases of this most difficult problem. 
But some of its psychological aspects deserve 
more consideration than they have as yet received. 
The psychologist traces the collapse of the mar- 
riage institution back through the laws which 
govern both marriage and divorce, back through 
the new development of the economic independence 
of women, back of any alleged lowering of the 
moral standard on the part of husbands and wives, 
to the psychological maladjustments which trans- 
form these incidents into elements of discord. We 
will describe a case which is fairly typical. 

John and Helen were two equally popular young 
people. After a period of friendship, a court- 
ship of considerable length began in which each 
party marshalled all of their respective gifts and 
graces of personality to the one end of being 
agreeable, thoughtful and unselfish in their rela- 
tions with the other. And each found unusual 
satisfaction in so doing. Betrothal in due time 


164 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


followed, and marriage in the end was the happy 
consummation of this relationship. ‘These two 
dominant personalities were now brought together 
in a much more intimate and constant contact. 
There was need for much more self-discipline 
and self-control, but for some reason the marriage 
ceremony brought to an abrupt end the previously 
marshalled control of temperament, temper, and 
selfishness. And traits which never made their 
appearance during courtship began to crop out. 
In every marriage one of three things is sure to 
occur. Either the stronger personality immedi- 
ately takes control of the situation and becomes 
the virtual head of the house; and the weaker per- 
sonality meekly submits and forms the habit of 
always giving in at the critical moment for the 
sake of peace; or, both generously give and take, 
like true sports, until an harmonious, workable 
adjustment has been established, personally bene- 
ficial to both, and domestic happiness results; or, 
being strong but undisciplined personalities, not 
possessing sufficient spiritual grace gracefully to 
yield when necessary, both insist upon having their 
individual tastes always gratified, and their whims 
always indulged. 

Now when an irresistible force encounters an 
immovable object, physics has quite a problem 
upon its hands. And when two such determined 
and strong personalities come together head-on, 
domestic happiness has quite a problem to solve. 
It so happens that John and Helen belong to this 
third group of young married people. It was not 
long after their marriage, that, relaxing the 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 165 


splendid spirit of unselfishness, thoughtfulness and 
self-control, which had so increased the charm of 
their personalities during courtship, both began 
rather strenuously to indicate that they naturally 
expected the other to prove their love by cheer- 
fully yielding to the other’s wish. And when 
their desires were opposed, the irresistible force en- 
countered an immovable object, and a bitter 
struggle ensued. It is well to realize that no 
amended marriage or divorce laws, no change in 
the economic position of women will ever solve this 
problem in spiritual physics. There is only one 
way this can be done, it is by resolving these two 
static and kinetic forces, through the introduction 
of a third force from the outside. That third 
spiritual outside force is made available through 
religion, and in the case of John and Helen, they 
had shut this force out of their lives some years 
before. So watch a substitute creep in and ruin 
what otherwise might have been a happy marriage! 
Surprise and keen disappointment were experi- 
enced by both at this exhibition of such an un- 
expected lack of affection and sympathy. Strong, 
undisciplined personalities always expect others to 
give in to them, and they are at first amazed, then 
angered, when this is not done. For a time they 
nursed their grievances, then, being well disposed 
toward each other, they generously decided frankly 
to face the unfortunate situation of uncongenial 
tastes, and agreed to allow the other full liberty to 
go his or her own way. 

Naturally common interests became fewer and 
fewer, inevitably as the years went by the hours 


166 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


of congenial companionship became less and less 
in number. Before they realized it, they had 
drifted so far apart that their relationship was 
almost formal. And, being attractive persons, 
each had found a friend who was genuinely in- 
terested in them, and sympathetic, and of con- 
genial tastes. Of course in each case this meant 
that a weaker and inferior companion had been 
found. But the same old pleasure of sympathetic 
companionship which was enjoyed in courtship 
was experienced, with the exception that all the 
concessions were made by the other party. From 
this point on, the way was short to domestic in- 
felicity, infidelity, and the divorce court. At the 
outset neither party had a thought of anything 
wrong. ‘The end was the inevitable result of the 
psychological failure of these two strong and un- 
disciplined personalities to make the necessary ad- 
justments required for their own good, and for a 
husband and wife who are going to live together 
in self-respect and mutual growing affection. 
This imaginary case can easily be duplicated in 
real life. Unless such psychological factors as 
these in the problem of marriage and divorce are 
faced and solved, all other remedies will ultimately 
fail to relieve the situation. 

Before the days of the emancipation of woman, 
the problem was not so acute. For in most cases 
woman did all of the adjusting; and when she 
did not, the man did. In the United States of 
America, woman has gained such a position of 
independence that the problem of marriage and 
divorce is somewhat unique. 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 167 


In marriage to-day, both husband and wife are 
bound to have demands made upon their character 
and disposition which no human spirit in its 
primary, unmodified instinctive and impulsive 
reactions is capable of meeting. A Kansas editor 
in commenting upon Judge Lindsey’s pessimistic 
outlook upon marriage, sums the matter up in this 
fashion: 


The fact about marriage and the home, the only 
place where it is possible that children can be born 
and reared, is that the institution is still in advance 
of human nature. Just as humanity is not ready for 
peace and so must prepare for war and get it, so 
humanity is not altogether fit for the home and the 
family. 


By thus pleading the infirmity of human nature, 
a bid is made for general consent to lower the 
standards of marriage to its natural level. But, 
simply because some human natures have proven 
themselves unequal to the demands of home and 
family life why should the fact be ignored that 
there are conditions under which this very human 
nature can be made equal to the demands of mar- 
riage and the home? And why on the evolution- 
ary theory has humanity lapsed so markedly since 
1890, and so rapidly since 1920? Why do those 
who are dealing with this problem devote all of 
their attention to the marriages that have failed? 
It is easy to understand why judges who sit on 
the benches of Domestic Relations Courts should 
have this side of the problem impressed upon their 
attention, and also lawyers who are constantly 
hearing of cases of domestic trouble. But divorces 


168 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


are still news. And successful marriages are still 
in the majority. Why not study the secret of 
these successful marriages instead of trying to 
solve the problem by devoting attention exclusively 
to the failures? ‘The scientific method would be 
to insist that if one successful, happy marriage 
has been consummated, the possibility of the prop- 
osition has been established. It only remains now 
to obtain the secret, and repeat the experiment until 
it becomes known and communicable. In moral 
and spiritual problems the inclination is to relieve 
the strain by gearing down our moral and spiritual 
life-machinery to the speed of the failures. Why 
concede that the marriage laws are the only things 
that can be changed? Is there any reason why an 
intelligent effort should not be made to bring this 
frail human nature again up to the level of these 
ancient standards? ‘This is the constructive and 
progressive method. 

What has been dropped out of the lives of those 
who have made such tragic failures of their mar- 
riage venture? One thing is the vital influence 
of religion and the Church. In every new, higher 
social and moral adventure our human natures 
have needed the help of religion. The biological 
value of religion in the struggle of the human race 
up to its present moral and social heights 1s recog- 
nized. Dr. C. G. Jung, the great analytical psy- 
chologist, makes these most interesting observa- 
tions: 

At a time when a large part of mankind is begin- 
ning to discard Christianity, it is worth while to un- 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 169 


derstand clearly why it was originally accepted 
(Psychology of the Unconscious, p. 258). 

The Christian Religion seems to have fulfilled its 
great biological purpose, in so far as we are able to 
judge (Op. cit., p. 85). 

The dynamic appearance of both religions (1. e., 
Christianity and Mithracism) betrays something of 
that enormous feeling of redemption which animated 
the first disciples and which we to-day scarcely know 
how to appreciate, for these old truths are empty to 
us. Most certainly we should still understand it, had 
our customs even a breath of ancient brutality, for we 
can hardly realize in this day the whirlwinds of the 
unchained libido which roared through the ancient 
Rome of the Cesars. The civilized man of the pres- 
ent day seems very far removed from that. He has 
become merely neurotic. So for us the necessities 
which brought forth Christianity have actually been 
lost, since we no longer understand their meaning. 
We do not know against what it had to protect us. 
For enlightened people, the so-called religiousness has 
already approached very close to a neurosis. In the 
past two thousand years Christianity has done its 
work and has erected barriers of repression which 
protect us from the sight of our own “ sinfulness ” 
(Op. cit., p. 80). 


This was all written before the World War. 
The history of what happened during the war is 
our answer to such superficial faith in human 
nature freed from the restraining power of vital 
religion. The wildest orgies of barbaric terrible- 
ness—Dionysian, Czesarian, Machiavellian, Bis- 
marckian—pale into May-day pleasantries in the 
presence of the terribleness of German atrocities. 
And the “whirlwinds of the unchained libido 
which roared through the ancient Rome of the 


170 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


Cesars”’? seem like gentle midsummer zephyrs 
when compared with the euroclydon of unchained 
Kultur-libido which roared through the Europe of 
yesterday. If there has ever existed an age in 
which the biological usefulness of Christianity is 
needed, it is our age. ‘The need is international, 
national, ecclesiastical, domestic, individual. Look- 
ing back over the way we have come, does it not 
seem as though God is forcing modern civilization 
to recognize and accept its dependence upon Him, 
or stand by and witness the collapse of its most 
cherished dreams and institutions? ‘Too long 
separated from God and divorced from the per- 
sonal experiences of vital religious devotion, the 
human spirit quickly slips back into selfishness and 
brutality, and becomes unequal to the higher moral 
and spiritual demands of disinterested, unselfish, 
sacrificial service required to sustain international 
amity, democracy, a Christian Church founded 
upon the spirit of self-sacrifice and service, and a 
Christian home. If we allow the inner spiritual 
life to grow smaller, we cannot expect it to be 
equal to the stupendous task of sustaining the 
ideals and institutions of a civilization which grew 
out of a larger spiritual experience. Professor 
Fucken characterizes this age in the following 
manner: 


We moderns have set ourselves at work with all 
our might, have acquired technical perfection, have 
combined isolated achievements into great systems. 
t But while we have given every care and 
effort to the means and conditions of life, we have 
exposed ourselves to the risk of losing life itself, and 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 171 


while performing astounding external feats, inwardly 
we have become smaller and smaller. Our work has 
separated itself from our souls, and it now reacts 
overmasteringly upon them and threatens to absorb 
them utterly (Op. cit., p. 9). 


Carlyle thus characterized the spirit of his age: 
“Thus is the Body-politic more than ever wor- 
shipped and tendered ; but the Soul-politic less than 
ever. 

Curiously enough this rule works both ways. 
We have already traced the development of self- 
interest from the controlling life-principle of the 
individual until it extends to business and political 
and national groups; in the same way the policy of 
worshipping and tendering the “ Body-politic ” to 
the neglect of the “Soul-politic,” reacts on the 
individual until he also comes to the conviction 
that the salvation of his body is of more impor- 
tance than the salvation of his own soul. Let us 
glance at the swing of this problem through the 
cycle it has described. The late Dr. Hyslop in 
his last book, Contact with the Other World, 
brings out this point most graphically. He says: 


Religion has become saturated with materialism 
and goes stumbling about blindly, groping for light 
and protection, while its erstwhile enemy, medicine, 
wears the crown of victory. The primary object of 
religion was to save the soul; that of medicine to 
save the body. As long as psychology could maintain 
that there was a soul and that its preservation was 
more important than that of the body, religion reigned 
supreme and medicine occupied a secondary place. 
The coffers of mankind were poured into the church. 

Materialism has turned the tables. Medicine 


172 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


is now more lucrative than priestcraft. We do not 
believe we have any souls, but we are sure we have/ 
bodies (p. 432). 


This phase of the modern’s change of faith has 
been fostered by psychology and medical science. 
Note one result which has developed. We will let 
Dr. Hyslop present this. He continues: 


Materialism taught us to believe that, if we only 
had good enough doctors we could sin as we pleased. 
We consulted the physician and took his drugs in- 
stead of buying indulgences. The fact is that the one 
is no better than the other for buying release from 
moral responsibility (Op. cit., p. 438). 


We are now reaping the harvest of this mate- 
rialistic blunder. For, if the rapid growth of 
super-belief cults and spiritual healing systems 
teaches this age any truth it is that materia medica 
has its clearly defined limits. And that the care 
of the soul is as imperative as the care of the body. 
In fact, we learned that seventy-five per cent. of 
the ailments for which the physician or healer is 
sought are spiritual in their origin or nature. And 
the psychoanalyst has proven that the policy of 
ignoring or repressing wrong-doing, or sin, is one 
of the most prolific causes of neurosis. Not the 
confessional which offers a substitute for repent- 
ance, but confession and repentance are the 
natural, healthful remedies for wrong-doing and 
sin. The age that interprets sin in purely social 
terms is sowing the wind and is destined the reap 
the whirlwind. We are witnessing the heartening 
spectacle of the soul of the individual serving its 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 173 


official notice upon the materialists of this age, 
that it will have its rightful share of consideration 
or ruin the whole cherished superstructure of 
modern civilization as sustained by The State, 
The Church, The Home. 

And it will go even farther than this in its re- 
venge, it will complete its ruin by destroying the 
very physicial body to whose selfish interests 
everything spiritual has been sacrificed. God 
moves in mysterious ways His wonders to per- 
form! It is most interesting to witness the two 
greatest sinners against the soul—psychology and 
medical science—whose hostile attitude toward re- 
ligion has helped to bring the present crisis down 
upon the heads of this age which put its trust in 
them, with their coats off digging like mad in the 
débris of the crash to extricate and save as many 
of the injured as possible through the spiritual 
means of suggestion, autosuggestion, psycho- 
analysis and the various branches of psychiatry. 
The desperation with which psychology and 
medical science are to-day struggling to repair the 
damage wrought by their materialistic blunders, 
opens the way for awakening humanity to the 
fundamental truth which religion has always em- 
phasized, that the soul needs care and nourish- 
ment as well as the body. And when this truth 
is sensed, religion will begin to come back into its 
legitimate place in the life of the individual and 
society. For it has no rivals and no equals as the 
preserver of the health of the spirit—the saviour 
of the soul. There is no more rational or scien- 
tifically sane wish possible than the one which the 


174 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


friend who “loved Gaius in truth” expressed for 
him in these words: “ Beloved, I wish above all 
things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, 
even as thy soul prospereth”’ (8 John 2). 
Professor James pays this tribute to religion: 


Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to 
the Subject’s range of life. It gives him a new 
sphere of power. A 

It seems to me that we ought to take it as meaning 
this added dimension of emotion, this enthusiastic 
temper of espousal, in regions where morality strictly 
so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce 
(Op. cit., p. 48). 

It is at this point that we encounter the subject 
of this chapter—The Belief in Prayer. This also 
may have seemed a long way around, but the psy- 
chologist must follow the natural windings of the 
stream of life. And to our surprise we find that 
the great highways of life run parallel to the 
streams of life and in this way avoid the steep 
ascent and descent of short cuts. The intellectual 
difficulties involved in the problem of prayer are 
in this way widely scattered along the way. Those 
who wish to make the way of prayer difficult re- 
fuse to travel the great highways of life, and in- 
sist upon conducting their followers through by- 
ways and little travelled intellectual trails. This 
route tends to create the impression that the way 
of prayer is intellectually impassable. But even 
these routes lead at last to God. In The Science 
of Prayer we have purposely chosen one of these 
most difficult routes to show that they end at the 
throne of God. Provided one does not mind 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 175 


rugged intellectual climbing, the Alpine heights 
can be scaled. In this chapter, however, we are 
not going to be called upon to take a very difficult 
intellectual route. The difficulties which we will 
encounter will be so widely scattered over the 
way, that they will be transformed into picturesque 
touches upon the landscape which relieve the mo- 
notony of the scenery. 

That prayer is one of the normal religious be- 
liefs requires little proof. At least when we allow 
our cross section of humanity to give its testimony. 
For it has been the heart of religious experience 
from the dawn of theistic faith, and is present in 
some form in all religions. The greatest religious 
geniuses of all centuries have drawn their. highest 
inspirations from it. The child finds it as natural 
to pray as to play. The ignorant and the learned 
kneel side by side in the House of God. In great 
crises, prayer becomes instinctive and spontaneous. 
At the front, every one prayed: and no one was 
ashamed to confess this fact. We sat around the 
shell holes and talked about it as naturally as about 
eating and sleeping. The suppression of the 
prayer impulse is a superimposed prohibition en- 
forced upon the instinctive impulse of the human 
spirit by fallacious reasoning and false intellectual 
pride. And the repression of this instinct is at- 
tended with disastrous spiritual consequences. 
As man is incurably religious, so also is he an in- 
curable pray-er. Professor James has this to say 
of prayer: 


Prayer . . . is the very soul and essence of 


176 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


religion. . . . Wherever this interior prayer is 
lacking there is no religion (Op. cit., p. 464). 

The genuineness of religion is thus indissolubly 
bound up with the question whether the prayerful 
consciousness be or be not deceitful. The conviction 
that something is genuinely transacted in this con- 
sciousness is the very core of living religion (Op. 
cit., p. 406). 


If it be true that “in all matters of sentiment 
one must have been there one’s self in order to 
understand,” and that “‘ one can never fathom an 
emotion or divine its dictates by standing outside 
it,” then psychology sustains the position that the 
only persons who are qualified to decide whether 
the prayerful consciousness is or is not deceitful, 
are those who are acquainted with the prayer ex- 
perience. Prayer is a biological experience. Not 
the dissecting room of the psychologist, but the 
closet and the Church, are the places in which its 
genuineness and reality are to be tested. And 
those who have had the widest range of experi- 
ence in praying are the best authorities upon the 
subject. The great pray-ers like Moses, Elijah, 
David, Isaiah, Daniel, Paul, Jesus, are the ones to 
bear testimony to the reality of the prayer con- 
sciousness. The fact that non-pray-ers do not 
believe that anything is genuinely transacted in this 
act of prayer, means no more than the fact that 
those not “listening in” do not hear anything 
through radio. What the great artists see, not 
what the unartistic do not see, gives us great art. 
What the great musicians hear and reproduce, not 
what the unmusical do not hear or appreciate, gives 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 177 


us great music. ‘The testimony of the non-artistic 
and the non-musical is of no value at all to the 
artist or musician. 

So in the case of prayer, the great pray-ers are 
the authorities. In art and music the masterpieces 
alone must win recognition for its geniuses. But 
in prayer, not only the masterpieces of prayer, and 
the wonders it has wrought, testify to its reality, 
the lives and the characters of the pray-ers impress 
the psychologist as much as these objective facts. 
Personal communion with God in prayer has en- 
abled pray-ers to achieve moral and spiritual 
leadership such as no non-pray-er has ever attained. 
We are now close upon the trail of a creative 
power. Psychology knows that no such natural, 
universal, timeless, persistent, wholesome, con- 
structive, creative power can be rooted in com- 
plete self-deception and superstition. Whence 
then does it arise? ‘The instinct from which it 
springs and to which it is related, is the cosmic 
urge of the human spirit which after it has found 
reality to be Purposive Good Will, or a Personal 
God, naturally reaches out its needy hands to this 
Reality for help. Prayer consciousness becomes 
in this way an additional proof of the correctness 
of this interpretation of reality, while at the same 
time this conception of reality verifies the genuine- 
ness of the prayer consciousness. The two stand 
or fall together. ‘This is why psychology when on 
its materialistic tact was so successful. First it 
reduced prayer to spiritual callisthenics, making it 
one with suggestion and autosuggestion, and then, 
having pulled this prop out of the belief in God 


178 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


proceeded to assert that the idea of God is simply 
a subjective creation of the human mind. Only a 
prayerless life will accept this idea of God. Itisa 
curious coincidence that the course of individual 
unbelief usually follows exactly this same course. 
First, for one reason or another, the unbeliever 
loses faith in the reality of prayer, this is easy in 
this scientific world, then in time, prayer is dropped 
out of life’s habits; and then, interest in religion 
wanes until belief in God is no longer vital. In the 
life of the individual the two stand or fall to- 
gether; they are mutually dependent. 

Those who have been following our study up to 
this point will not be surprised to learn that all 
sub-belief and all super-beliefs have their origin 
either in the suppression or perversion of this ele- 
mental prayer impulse. Sub-belief suppresses it, 
super-belief perverts it. Prayer is now recognized 
as a specific for acute and chronic unbelief. In 
chronic unbelief the prayer instinct has been un- 
naturally suppressed during early childhood when 
the suppression has wrought the most serious 
psychological havoc. ‘This is why every chronic 
unbeliever raves at the thought of prayer with in- 
stinctive fear. He knows that if he prays, the 
fight is all over. Personal prayer, supplemented 
by intercession, will break up the complex of the 
chronic unbeliever when argument has failed. 
Argument and reasoning call into play only a part 
of one’s personality; the deepest reaches of one’s 
nature are left untouched. But prayer is a psy- 
chological experience which calls into action the 
whole thinking, feeling and willing functions of 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 179 


consciousness together with the reserves of the 
unconscious mind. This is why it is so infinitely 
superior to the devices of super-belief cults and 
mechanical spiritual healing sciences. In argument 
we deal with the dead experiences upon which we 
have reflected, but the praying man calls into im- 
mediate action the live forces of his spiritual nature 
and tests them out in their social and cosmic rela- 
tions. With the unbeliever, allow him to limit his 
belief in prayer to its lowest terms consonant with 
sincere communion. Leave the form of prayer 
to be fought out between the pray-er and God, 
when spirit with Spirit doth meet. For prayer has 
in it much more than simple communion or peti- 
tion. The resources of prayer are as yet un- 
fathomed. In his Psychology of Religion, Pro- 
fessor Coe says: 


Prayer may be considered as dominant desire. But 

it is also a way of securing domination over desire. 

Here, then, is our greater problem as to the 

function of prayer. It starts as the assertion of any 

desire; it ends as the organization of one’s desires 

into a system of desires recognized as superior and 
then made one’s own (p. 318). 


Petition in prayer is only a superficial, the-| 
oretical difficulty which looms large in the mind of 
the non-pray-er. The pray-er has had too much 
experience in the process of the reorganization of 
his desires during prayer to be seriously disturbed 
by such an insignificant difficulty. Prayer may 
start with any kind of a little, selfish, foolish de- 
sire, but when sincerely pursued, it results in secur- 
ing dominance over our own selfish desires. It 


180 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


begins with a desire to have our own little will 
done, but it ends with a voluntary surrender of 
our wills to the Will of God. The experience of 
Jesus in Gethsemane is typical. He knelt with this 
natural, human petition upon His lips: “ Abba 
Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away 
this cup from me.” After an agonizing struggle, 
He ended his prayer with these words: “ Never- 
theless not what I will, but what thou wilt” (See 
Mark 14:36). Since, then, prayer possesses the 
power to transform desire, the question: “ For 
what shall I pray?’ becomes relatively unimpor- 
tant. It is infinitely better to pray for the most 
unreasonable things than to refuse to pray on the 
ground that we are not intelligent enough to know 
how to pray. Let the human spirit go to God 
with any petition! It is the going to God and the 
asking that are the psychologically potent experi- 
ences. The pray-er invites God to come into his 
life and assist in solving its problems. And God 
will not come in unless invited. What happens in 
the reorganization of desires and the surrender of 
the selfish will of the individual to the greater 
good, is proof enough that some power outside of 
the natural unmodified desires of the individual 
has been at work. 

As sub-belief suppresses the prayer instinct, so 
super-beliefs pervert it. ‘This is the secret of their 
ready, but limited, psychological power. Spiritism 
substitutes communication with spirits for com- 
munion with the Spirit of God. In every Spirit- 
istic Church, communication with spirits forms the 
central feature of the religious service. Theosophy 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 181 


substitutes meditation and communion with im- 
personal Reality through the release of the human 
spirit from the prison of the physical body and its 
entrance into the astral body. This lapse into 
light-hypnosis is one of the devices which the hu- 
man spirit has invented to provide the delusion that 
one is in communion with reality; conscious rea- 
son refuses to admit any such thing. ‘The experi- 
ence being limited to subjective states, is a poor 
substitute. Christian Science substitutes the “ un- 
derstanding’ of impersonal Principle for prayer 
to a Personal God. Mrs. Eddy says: 


The common custom of praying for the recovery 
of the sick finds help in blind belief, whereas help 
should come from enlightened understanding (Science 
and Health, p. 12). 


In another place she says: 


Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray 
the principle of mathematics to solve the problem? 
The rule is already established, and it is our task to 
work out the solution. Shall we ask the divine Prin- 
ciple of all goodness to do His own work? His work 
is done, and we have only to avail ourselves of God’s 
rule in order to receive His blessing, which enables us 
to work out our own salvation (Science and Health, 
p. 3). 


M. Coué places a little string with twenty knots, 
or Coué beads, in the hand of each patient and 
asks that his little formula be repeated twenty 
times every night before retiring and every morn- 
ing before arising. It is easy to see the simulation 
of the abandoned prayer habit in this practice. If 


182 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


these perversions of the prayer instinct and habit 
work such wonders, what may we not expect of 
the genuine practice of prayer when given the 
same trial? None of these poor substitutes are 
employed except by those who have first aban- 
doned the habit of real prayer. 

If there is no escape from the use either of 
genuine prayer or some suppression or perversion 
of the practice, without the human spirit lapsing 
from a normal and healthy condition into ill-health, 
we are reduced to the choice of the genuine article 
or a substitute. And if the great problem is to fit 
this naturally selfish human spirit into its personal 
spiritual, social and cosmic environment, no sub- 
stitute has yet been discovered in this world to 
take the place of prayer. 

As soon as science discovered that the nitrog- 
enous substance now known as vitamin left out 
of the diet of animals and humans impaired health, 
and that as soon as it was replaced in food that 
it restored this impaired health, it announced its 
discovery that vitamin is essential to health. It 
is as easy to prove that prayer is essential to spir- 
itual health. For when prayer is dropped out of 
the spiritual life of any person the spiritual life is 
in some degree impaired. It is a psychological 
fact that missionaries as a group are much greater 
pray-ers than a cross section of any group of re- 
ligious workers in the home country. Even 
though when they first leave for the foreign field 
they may not have given prayer such a large place 
in their religious life, it does not take many years 
upon the foreign field to demonstrate that they 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 183 


are not spiritually equal to their tasks without 
more prayer than they have previously found 
necessary. More than this, prayer is a creative 
power. It not only restores the enervated moral 
and spiritual forces of personality, and brings har- 
mony and peace by unifying conflicting and dis- 
organizing elements, thus preserving spiritual 
health, but it actually increases these moral and 
spiritual endowments. The pray-er becomes able 
to exercise greater moral and spiritual strength 
than he possessed before; he exhibits nobler spir- 
itual qualities than, without the assistance of 
prayer, he ever was able to manifest. We are now 
clearly within the realm of dynamics; the intellect, 
feelings and will are all the beneficiaries of this 
new power. From whatever angle we approach 
the problem of prayer, it brings us back to the 
relation of the human will to the Will of God. 
What then does psychology find one of the chief 
functions of prayer to be? Is it not the control of 
this independent human personality which God 
has endowed with what we call freedom of the 
will, so that this little human will may become a 
voluntary, intelligent, enthusiastic cooperator with 
Him in His Purposive Good Will? Ina world of 
personalities this must always be the great problem 
in the life of the individual, the home, the State, 
the Church, the universe. Personification, pan- 
theism and sacrifice were the early rational at- 
tempts to work out this problem. Monotheism and 
prayer are the evolutionary products of these 
ideas, if one wishes to arrive at them by a strictly 
empirical route. Psychology clearly reveals the 


184 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


biological objective of prayer, for it makes no at- 
tempt to conceal from the pray-er its ultimate de- 
sign. It does not, as most non-pray-ers love to af- 
firm, encourage the human spirit to believe that 
this order of procedure can be successfully re- 
versed. Because nothing can be as good for the 
individual and society, as the unopposed fulfill- 
ment of God’s Purposive Good Will. The an- 
archistic, blasphemous idea is to try to bend God’s 
Good Will out of its gracious intent to grant the 
individual’s personal desires which are contrary to 
His purpose. 

In a universe where personalities occupy such an 
important place, we have now found at least one 
strictly scientific sphere within which prayer can 
function without conflicting with any other known 
material or spiritual force. Humanity might have 
been capable of reaching its present heights of 
moral and spiritual attainment in the life of the 
individual and society without pray-ers, but his- 
torically it has been laid under heavy tribute to 
the biological value of prayer. The greatest moral 
and spiritual leaders of the centuries have been 
pray-ers. Jesus Christ was a great pray-er. And 
the sacrificial personalities whose wills have been 
most enthusiastic and intelligent in their volun- 
tary cooperation with His Purposive Good Will 
have always been the greatest pray-ers. It remains 
for the non-pray-ers to surpass the pray-ers in this 
moral and spiritual achievement before they are in 
a position to expect humanity to accept their pray- 
less life as a biological substitute. 

Prayer, then, does not presume to interfere with, 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 185 


or interrupt, the established order of things. On 
the contrary, it is a providential provision designed 
by the All-Wise Creator of this universe to pre- 
vent anything like the universal interference of 
our naturally selfish little human wills with His 
Fatherly purpose to make this life as near like 
heaven as possible, through having His Will done 
on earth as it is in heaven. It does not take a 
Calvinistic theologian to prove that the real inter- 
ferers with the general welfare of those who travel 
through this “ vale of tears and profiteers’”’ are the 
persons whose wills are most out of harmony with 
that Purposive Good Will which both sociology 
and psychology acknowledge to be back of their 
Humanistic theory of creative evolution. ‘Those 
who have allowed self-interest to dominate their 
lives are the ones who have always plunged hu- 
manity into its worst catastrophes, such as wars, 
profiteering, crime waves, commercialized vice, 
etc. Prayer gives religion a chance to function at 
its task of universalizing our instincts and emo- 
tions. And normal religious belief, which accord- 
ing to our definition has already secured the ap- 
proval of the majority, or it is not normal, is the 
natural unifier of separate free wills. 

If the human spirit has the cosmic nature which 
we pointed out in the previous chapter, if reality 
is to be interpreted in terms of Purposive Good 
Will, if society is the medium through which this 
human spirit functions, then one of the funda- 
mental problems of the individual is to bring one’s 
own free will into some satisfactory working 
agreement with this cosmic reality which is a con- 


186 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


stituent part of its personality as well as of so- 
ciety and the universe. If this working agreement 
can be made so that its terms are voluntarily, in- 
telligently and enthusiastically accepted by the hu- 
man individual, whose will is free to choose to co- 
operate or not, we have established the highest and 
most ideal state of existence to be conceived, 
whether to be lived exclusively upon this earth or 
to be continued in another life. Prayer stands 
without an equal as the one divinely ordained 
means for accomplishing. this seeming miracle. 
Every fundamental principle of psychology pro- 
nounces it scientifically sound for prayer to func- 
tion toward this end in human personality. Of 
course, this consent has been forced from the un- 
willing lips of the psychologist by the undeniable 
historical fact that prayer has so functioned from 
the very first. Some religious people may be im- 
patient over this conclusion because it does not 
seem to assign a large enough sphere for the opera- 
tion of prayer. But it must be remembered we 
are now endeavouring to establish the scientific 
nature of prayer. If a legitimate place can be 
found for it in this modern scientifically conceived 
universe, it possesses all of its own potential possi- 
bilities, and will gradually make room for these 
as it functions. The fact that unbelief in its rea- 
sonableness and efficiency has reduced the pray-ers 
in this modern world to such a small number, is 
primarily responsible for the loss of faith in 
prayer. 

If we can once get religious people and 
religious institutions praying with intelligent and 


BELIEF IN PRAYER 187 


enthusiastic conviction that prayer is necessary to 
the healthy religious life, and that it is biologically 
valuable for the individual and society, the de- 
velopment of its inherent powers will naturally 
follow. Professor James once summed up the es- 
sence of this chapter in this memorable passage: 


When all is said and done, we are in the end abso- 
lutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices 
and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at 
and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our 
only permanent positions of repose. Now in those 
states of mind that fall short of religion, the surrender 
is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the 
sacrifice is undergone at the very best without com- 
plaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, sur- 
render and sacrifice are positively espoused: even 
unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the 
happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy 
and felicitous what in any case 1s necessary; and if it 
be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its 
vital importance as a human faculty stands vindi- 
cated beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ 
of our life, performing a function which no other 
portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill (Op. 
Cie es its), 


Tennyson puts the problem thus: 


Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. 


And prayer enables religion to perform this 
miracle. 


Vil 
THE BELIEF THAT JESUS IS THE CHRISs 


HEN we come to the belief that Jesus 

\) \ is the Christ, we reach the parting of 
the religious ways. In our belief in 

prayer we travelled with the large company of the 
religious of all religions; in our belief in a Per- 
sonal God, we travelled with the believers of 
ail theistic faiths as our companions; but when we 
press on beyond this point to the belief that Jesus 
is the Christ, we Christians are compelled to travel 
alone. It is inevitable that we should miss our 
comrades ; many noble souls are to be found among 
them, and many congenial friendships have been 
formed which it is hard to break. And there is 
certainty in numbers, so that the very act of sepa- 
ration raises doubts and makes us wonder whether 
in this further religious advance we are right. 
The gregarious and the herd instincts are strong. 
They encourage as a substitute program, the wide- 
spread effort to reduce all religious beliefs to their 
greatest common denominator, and then, the mak- 
ing of this common denominator the total sum of 
essential truth necessary for the foundation of 
practical religious faith. Those who advocate and 
approve of this proposition believe that it repre- 
sents an advance in religious diplomacy, and will 
strengthen the hold of religion upon the modern 
mind. But when this proposition is analyzed, it is 


found that it is most reactionary in its nature and 
188 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 189 


has its rise in the loss of belief in the distinctive 
features of historic Christianity. 

Religious progress, like all other progress, is 
born of intensified specialization, and carried for- 
ward by the surviving fit. The same law of bio- 
logical evolution operates in this realm. The ques- 
tion is whether the distinctive characteristics of 
the new species are sufficiently superior to survive 
in the merciless struggle for victory. Only those 
ignorant of the genius of progress will stake their 
hope for the present and future of religion in such 
-areactionary program. The fate of historic Chris- 
tianity hangs upon the survival of its distinctive 
religious features, not those which it holds in com- 
mon with all other religions. 

The division which belief that Jesus is the Christ 
makes in the ranks of religious believers reduces 
our majority by a large number. So that Western 
civilization is separated from that of the ancient 
Eastern, by a clear-cut line of cleavage, and this 
becomes a normal religious belief in Christian 
lands only. Yet there is no doubt in which branch 
of civilization the greatest religious and social ad- 
vance has been made; and the religion which has 
led this advance is historic Christianity. If the 
signs of the times indicate anything, it is that the 
hope of the religious, social, political, moral, in- 
dustrial and international advance of the present 
and the future must be derived from the same 
source. At least there is no religion anywhere 
upon the horizon which can seriously be consid- 
ered as a rival. The social need Professor Ell- 
wood, a leading sociologist, puts in these words: 


1909 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


The real religious problem of our society is to 
secure the general acceptance of a religion adapted 
to the requirements of continuous progress toward an 
ideal society, consisting of all humanity (Reconstruc- 
tion of Religion, p. 64). 


After examining the credentials of all existing 
religions to see how many meet these require- 
ments, he rejects all but Christianity. Of it he 
says: | 


The Christian Church undertakes no impossible 
task. It summons men to devotion to no impractical 
ideal. A Christian world is not only practicable; in 
the long run it will be found that no other sort is 
practicable (Op. cit., p. 306). 


When historic Christianity is analyzed for its 
most distinctive feature, it is not found in its God, 
its temples, its sacred book, its prophets, its pray- 
ers, its teaching, but in the personality of its 
founder, Jesus Christ. While the theologian and 
sociologist may have some difficulty in agreeing 
upon the essential element in this personality, the 
psychologist finds it in His Messianic conscious- 
ness. The life He lived is psychologically born 
out of His unquestioned acceptance of His Mes- 
sianic commission. Superficial thinkers and crit- 
ical scholars may content themselves with the im- 
pression that Jesus’ Messianic mission was only an 
incident in His life, but no profound scholar, 
friend or foe, has ever made this blunder. If the 
reader is not prepared to accept this statement at 
this point in our study, lay it on the table and re- 
serve a decision until we have finished. 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 191 


To present this most distinctive feature of 
Christianity to this modern age in a way that it 
will realize its essential value, demands clear think- 
ing and interpretation. For this modern world is 
less inclined to feature the personality of Jesus 
than His teaching. And the Christological front 
is by far the most difficult to hold. It is exposed 
on so many sides, it can be attacked from so many 
different angles, it has more foes, and is psycho- 
logical, as well as historical. Its Biblical origin 
and theological and creedal expression have com- 
plicated the situation so that the facts, and the 
beliefs deduced from them by reasoning are often 
confused. The personality of Jesus has given rise 
to three different problems: The problem of His 
Messiahship, His Divinity, His Deity. The ma- 
jority of people jump from the one to the other 
of these problems as though they were synony- 
mous. It must be remembered that each has its 
own historical basis in fact, its own separate be- 
ginning in time, its own distinct reaction in re- 
ligious experience. Each of these beliefs must be 
made to stand upon its own historical and psy- 
chological foundation. 

As all scholarship, ancient and modern has made 
its greatest advances along the front of Jesus’ 
Messiahship, we will devote our study to this part 
of the Christological problem. In doing this we 
are lining up on the very Christological front upon 
which the great offensive of the early part of the 
nineteenth century was launched, and to which 
front the attack is again returning, after almost a 
century of trying to break through upon the fronts 


192 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


of His Divinity and Deity. In spite of the pre- 
vailing impression, the reader may rest assured 
that the Christological fronts are not nearly as 
seriously threatened as the enemy would like to 
make one believe, and the enemy are not as 
strongly intrenched and armed intellectually as is 
imagined. 

It will be a valuable bit of “ intelligence ” infor- 
mation to learn the way the enemy broke through 
this Christological front in the early days of the 
nineteenth century. They did not open their of- 
fensive with a direct frontal attack upon the Deity 
of Jesus. Under the guidance of a very skillful 
leader, they withdrew their forces from the front 
line of creedal defenses, and adopted the strategy 
of a lateral attack upon the reliability of the Gospel 
accounts of His life and work. ‘This offensive was 
launched by a scholar of Jewish antecedents— 
David Friedrich Strauss. We emphasize the Jew- 
ish element in the problem, which is universally 
overlooked, because the reader is by this time well 
enough acquainted with the psychology of belief 
to scent trouble about the Messiahship of Jesus 
whenever a Jewish scholar bends his energies to 
the solution of the mystery of the personality of 
Jesus. The Jew is a victim of a deep-seated, racial 
complex at this point, which inevitably tilts the 
motived-will-to-think and selective attention to 
such an angle of hostility that, in spite of the very 
best of intentions, in spite, sometimes, of nominal 
conversion to Christianity, the belief that Jesus is 
the Christ is liable to be accepted only in a very 
modified form. 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 193 


A way of escape from the necessity of the ac- 
ceptance of this particular belief is often eagerly 
welcomed. At least so it was in Strauss’ case. 
Curiously enough, he found plenty of encourage- 
ment along this line among the religious thinkers 
of his day. After much investigation of the situ- 
ation, he came to the conclusion that the time was 
ripe for starting this great offensive. It is a strik- 
ing coincidence that the movement began in the 
epochal year of 1830. For the third time we dis- 
cover that scientific discovery was not primarily 
responsible for this assault. As in the case of be- 
lief in a Personal God and in Prayer, the move- 
ment was already well under way before a single 
scientific discovery of any revolutionary nature had 
been made. If it is possible to impress the reader: 
with the fact that modern unbelief is not of 
scientific origin, we will have succeeded in proving 
that it has no legitimate right to claim modern 
science as its ally. Modern scientific data has been 
conscripted into its defense simply because most of 
the scientists upon the field were interested in using 
its data for this purpose. 

The mythical interpretation of the Gospels, 
which Strauss makes the basis of his Das Leben 
Jesu, published in 1835, was already a widely cur- 
rent critical theory before he employed it. Vol- 
taire had preceded him many years, dying in 1778. 
M. Dupuis in 1794 published a work which at- 
tacked all religions; he centered his fire upon the 
historical character of the evidences of Christian- 
ity. Schleiermacher for some years had been lec- 
turing along this line, and in 1830 Strauss came 


194 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


under his influence as a student. It was here that 
he found the idea which appealed to him so 
strongly that he made it the controlling idea of all 
his thinking, and which his brilliant mind capital- 
ized and used to the discomfiture of historic Chris- 
tianity. With rare strategy, Strauss avoided 
denying the existence of the historical Jesus; he 
adopted the more subtle position of claiming that 
the Jesus of the Gospels was a mythical character 
in no way identical with the historical Jesus. 
Strauss was an able scholar, an influential thinker, 
a brilliant writer, and the time being ripe for this 
idea, his book produced a profound sensation. It 
crystallized German liberal Christological thinking 
and raised an issue which no longer could be 
avoided. All German Christian thinkers were 
compelled to reckon with it; they were placed upon 
the defensive. It was a great misfortune for his- 
toric Christianity that this work appeared in Ger- 
many where faith in the historical Jesus was none 
too strong, and where its defense was a compro- 
mise. With deep concern and intense sincerity the 
leading Christian thinkers of all succeeding gene- 
rations have had to grapple with the Christological 
problem as Strauss thrust it upon them. Let us 
trace for a moment the influence of this one book 
on German thought. 

As Professor Albrecht Ritschl, the theologian, 
felt the historical foundations of Christianity 
crumbling under the feet of the believers, he con- 
ceived the idea of saving Christianity by lifting it 
up out of the reach of historical facts. ‘To accom- 
plish this object he worked out his clever value- 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 195 


judgment theory. According to this, historical 
facts have but a secondary value. Man’s great 
problem is to gain victory over this world; the 
mission of Jesus Christ is to assist him in this 
struggle. If any particular incidents in the life of 
Jesus Christ are helpful to this end, belief in them 
is of value. If, on the other hand, any of these 
incidents, such as the virgin birth, the baptism, 
the miracles, the resurrection, etc., are not helpful, 
if they do not make Jesus Christ the kind of a 
Christ you need, then you are not under obligation 
to believe them. By skillfully shifting the center 
of value of the life of Jesus into the moral realm, 
Ritschl was able to save Christianity from Strauss’ 
mythical theory and at the same time by reason of 
his belief, exalt Christ to the place where His deity 
became acknowledged. So that His highest Chris- 
tological value is conserved. 

This idea was eagerly welcomed by many Chris- 
tians, and Ritschl was proclaimed the saviour of 
Christianity and the Church. The power of its 
appeal cannot be appreciated until one has reached 
the point where the historical foundations of 
Christianity seem to be crumbling under one’s feet. 
The writer can remember when in the theological 
seminary, one of his professors, a thorough 
Ritschlian, presented this theory to the students’ 
disturbed minds. Scientific education, and critical 
Biblical scholarship had brought us to the place 
where we were no longer sure of any of these his- 
torical facts. The sense of relief which passed 
through our minds when we were informed that 
it was not necessary for us to believe any specific 


196 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


historical event in the life of Jesus, if this event 
was not helpful to us in our struggle to gain vic- 
tory over the world, cannot be imagined. Taking 
for example the Divinity of Jesus Christ, our 
professor said: 


The divinity of Christ lies wholly in the ethical 
sphere according to Ritschl, but its mark is not per- 
fection, a quantitative and static notion, but efficiency, 
a qualitative and dynamic one; not what He was in 
Himself, but what He has done for us. 


At first thought this idea seems to be harmless 
and helpful. But as well-intended as it was so far 
as Ritschl was concerned, it opens the way to play 
fast and loose with historical facts. Nietzsche 
brought out its fallacy in a most disconcerting 
manner. In his student days he read Strauss’ Das 
Leben Jesu, and was fascinated by it. A little later 
he studied under Ritschl, both at Bonn and Leip- 
sig, and for his teacher he always had a high re- 
gard. But from him he accepted only the skeleton, 
not the content, of this value-judgment theory. 
Ritschl had found in the historical Jesus the very 
things which helped him in his life-struggle for 
victory over the world, but Nietzsche found in the 
historical Jesus just the opposite. So he turned 
the value-judgment theory around and worked it 
backward. He said that the teaching and example 
of Jesus inculcated humility of spirit and submis- 
sion to the will of God, and these ideas rob the 
human spirit of those masterful qualities of inde- 
pendence and self-interest which make man’s vic- 
tory over the world possible, and so shut the door 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 197 


to the goal of his becoming a superman. There- 
fore the acceptance of this very Ritschlian value- 
judgment theory compels him to reject Christian- 
ity and oppose the teaching of Jesus. The vicious- 
ness of his anti-Christian hostility is well expressed 
in the quotation already used, which we will re- 
peat. He says: 


I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great 
intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, 
for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, sub- 
terranean, mean—lI call it the one immortal blemish 
of mankind. That which deifies me, and that which 
makes me stand apart from the whole of the rest of 
humanity is the fact that I have unmasked Christian 
morality (Quoted from Figgis, The Will to Freedom, 


p. 48). 


The inherent fallacy of Ritschl’s value-judgment 
theory lies in the fact that it shifts the founda- 
tion of Christianity from its objective, historical 
basis to a subjective basis, where it is within the 
power of any one to make of its historical facts as 
much or little as is desired. Every such shift, no 
matter how well-intended, is always in the end 
disastrous. 

Professor Adolph Harnack, the great Church 
historian, had too keen an historical instinct to be 
satished either with Strauss’ mythical interpreta- 
tion of the Gospels, or with Ritschl’s scant regard 
for the historical. He places great emphasis upon 
the historical Jesus. But, while he modifies 
Strauss’ extremes, he still takes amazing liberties 
in separating the historical Jesus from the Jesus of 
the Gospels. Here is an illustration of his way 


198 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


of handling the problem, taken from his great 
work History of Dogma, In one place he says: 


Behind the only manifested life of Jesus later spec- 
ulation has put a life in which he wrought, not in 
subordination and obedience, but in like independence 
and dignity with God. That goes beyond the utter- 
ances of Jesus even in the fourth Gospel (Vol. I, p. 
64, English Trans.). 


In What is Christianity? he sums up the prob- 
lem in these words: 


The Gospel as Jesus proclaimed it, has to do with 
the Father only and not with the Son. This is no 
paradox, nor, on the other hand, is it “ rationalism,” 
but the simple expression of the actual fact as the 
evangelists give it (p. 154). 


In another place in the same work he remarks: 


The sentence “I am the Son of God” was not 
inserted in the Gospel by Jesus himself, and to put 
that sentence there side by side with the others is to 
make an addition to the Gospel (Op. cit., p. 156). 


In thus vainly endeavouring to shift the Chris- 
tian’s belief from the Son to the Father, Professor 
Harnack unintentionally assists the very move- 
ment of Strauss, which he is striving to check. 

Professor Rudolph Eucken, the great philoso- 
pher, though not primarily concerned with theo- 
logical views, is deeply interested in religion. His 
two books, Back to Religion and Can We Still Be 
Christians? give clear proof of this fact. ‘The 
question raised by the title of the second-men- 
tioned book: “Can We Still Be Christians?” 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 199 


brings from him this reply: “Our answer is 
that we not only can but we must be 
Christians’ (p. 218). This answer sounds most 
satisfactory. But we have learned by this time 
to press these confessions of faith to the point 
where their actual content is known. So in the 
case of Professor Eucken we must know what 
place he assigns to Jesus Christ in the Christianity 
he asserts we must accept. Upon this point he 
makes no effort to keep us in the dark. A single 
passage will clear up this question. He says: 


He (Jesus Christ) can no longer, however lofty 
and pure his humanity, be an object of faith and be 
worshipped as divine. Every attempt to take refuge 
in compromise is wrecked on a relentless Either—Or. 
There is no middle term between man and God, for 
we do not wish to sink back into hero-cult. Thus if 
Jesus is not God, and Christ not the Second Person 
of the Trinity, then he is man,—not a man like any of 
us, but still a man. We may reverence him as a 
leader, a hero, a martyr, but we cannot forthwith bind 
and pledge ourselves to him and yield him uncondi- 
tional submission. Still less can we make him the 
center of a cult, for that would now be nothing else 
than an intolerable idolatry (p. 34). 


This frank confession by Professor Eucken 
brings the movement started by Strauss to its cul- 
mination. Both friends and foes of the Church 
agree to abandon the historic Christian belief 
which centers in the Person of Jesus Christ. And 
this position is adopted with the express benevolent 
purpose of saving Christianity for the thinking 
people of Germany. ‘The sincerity of these great 
Christian thinkers of Germany is above suspicion, 


200 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


but their efforts seem to have failed to accom- 
plish the very purpose desired. Germany ought to 
be in a position to prove the claims of many mod- 
ern American thinkers. There, liberty of thought, 
that “‘ New Freedom ”’ which sounds so attractive, 
absence of dogmatic domination, intellectual cour- 
age, daring acceptance of the pure humanity of 
Jesus, and all of those much-heralded panaceas for 
the Church’s ills, are enjoying unrestricted oppor- 
tunity to test their vitality and power. And they 
have the cordial support and hearty backing of the 
greatest religious thinkers of the nation, in State, 
University and Church. 

Those who believe that this is the type of Chris- 
tianity that will save the Church and State can 
never hope to have more favourable conditions 
under which to have this idea tested. What is 
the response of Germany to this type of Christian- 
ity? We will allow Professor EKucken himself to 
describe the deplorable condition of Christianity 
in this very Germany. He says: 


Despite all its reputation and influence, Christianity 
is being assailed by a passionate movement of protest 
which is growing in intensity and carrying all before 
it. . . . Unbelief was once confined to the few, and 
those chiefly in the upper strata of society; to-day it 
lays hold on large masses of people, plunging them 
now into dull indifference, now into a passion of 
iconoclastic hate. Figures prove conclusively that the 
interest in church services and observances is con- 
stantly decreasing and that the faithful are rapidly 
becoming a minority. In our great cities—in Ger- 
many, at least,—every attack or even aspersion on 
Christianity meets with rapturous applause (p. 1 f.). 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 201 


This report upon the efficiency of this type of 
Christianity for building up the Church and in- 
creasing the hold of Christianity upon the masses 
is not any too encouraging. It is easy to under- 
stand why the enemies of Christianity and the 
Church should rally around the Christian leader 
who is attempting to establish this type of Chris- 
tianity in America. But it is difficult to under- 
stand how any intelligent student of the history of 
Christianity can entertain the hope that such a 
move will benefit the Church of Jesus Christ. Yet 
there are a few Christian leaders who have gained 
considerable publicity of late through advocating 
this very type of Christianity as the only hope of 
the Christian Church in the United States. If 
this were even a new idea, never tried, there might 
be some excuse for giving it consideration. But it 
has been given a fair trial under most favourable 
conditions in Germany, and both State and Church 
have suffered irretrievably from its influence. In 
fact from the days of Arius it has been repeatedly 
tried by various religious sects, and in no instance 
has the result been a success. The historian Pro- 
fessor T. R. Glover in his book, The Jesus of His- 
tory, has aptly summed up the history of all such 
movements in this striking passage: 


For those who believe, as we all do at heart, that 
the world is rational, that real effects follow real 
causes, and conversely that behind great movements 
lie great forces, the fact must weigh enormously that 
wherever the Christian Church, or a section of it, or a 
single Christian, has put upon Jesus Christ a higher 
emphasis—above all where everything has been cen- 


202 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


tered in Jesus Christ—there has been an increase of 
power for Church, or community, or man. Where 
new value has been found in Jesus Christ, the Church 
has risen in power, in energy, in appeal, in victory. 
2 On the other hand, where through a nebulous 
philosophy men have minimized Jesus, or where, 
through some weakness of the human mind, they 
have sought the aid of others and relegated Jesus 
Christ to a more distant, even if a higher, sphere— 
where,in short, Christ is not the living center of every- 
thing, the value of the Church has declined, its life 
has waned. That, to my own mind, is the most strik- 
ing and outstanding fact in history. There must bea 
real explanation of a thing so signal in a rational uni- 
verseu( pity) « 

But aside from this pragmatic test, which should 
be of great interest to the empirical, scientific 
mind of to-day, another difficulty has most unex- 
pectedly arisen which makes the acceptance of 
Jesus as a man whom we may revere as a leader, 
a hero, a martyr, but whom we cannot make the 
center of a cult without becoming idolaters im- 
possible. Before psychology entered the field of 
religion, it was a common practice for critics of a 
certain type to explain the Messianic words of 
Jesus as mere incidents in His teaching, or as ad- 
ditions placed in His mouth by the Gospel writers. 
But when trained psychologists began to analyze 
the religious consciousness of Jesus, they found 
that His Messianic consciousness was the one great 
obsession of His being, the only sufficient explana- 
tion of His most extraordinary career. Upon this 
point friends and foes are in agreement. From 
this discovery a new problem develops. For the 
psychologist is forced to admit that the Messianic 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 203 


consciousness of the Jesus of the Gospels does not 
fall within the range of normal human conscious- 
ness. ‘Therefore only two alternatives remain: 
Either the Jesus of the Gospels is super-normal or 
abnormal. To the unbelieving psychologists only 
one of these alternatives is open, Jesus must have 
been abnormal. After having worked for seventy- 
five years to convince thinking people that He was 
a perfectly normal human being of a high order, 
it was indeed somewhat disconcerting to be con- 
fronted with the necessity of shifting so hastily 
to this most uncongenial view. But the “ relent- 
less Either-Or” held them in its clutches and 
there was no escape. 

Enter, at this point, the pathographers to de- 
fend this decision. For the benefit of those who 
are not acquainted with pathographers, we will de- 
scribe a pathographer as a specialist who endeav- 
ours to make a scientific diagnosis of the psychic 
health of an historic character from biography or 
autobiography. So in this case the pathographers 
begin to scrutinize the Gospel records of the life 
and sayings of Jesus to see what evidence can be 
found to prove that He was mentally unsound. 
They begin rather cautiously by pronouncing Him 
an ecstatic. Then they pronounce Him an epilep- 
tic, ending with the assertion that He was a para- 
noiac. While we are reluctant to disturb the feel- 
ings of the reader with the shocking details of the 
actual statements of these pathographers, yet every 
Christian thinker and student who enters the 
Christological field to-day is destined to encounter 
those who will defend the position of these pa- 


204 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


thographers. Especially is this true among physi- 
cians and psychologists, so that thorough acquaint- 
ance with their general point of view is indispensa- 
ble. Mr. L. R. Washburn states their case in this 
single passage: 


It is difficult, if not impossible to account for the 
extraordinary career of Jesus upon the ground of 
sanity. There is only one way to explain the Gospels 
—either Jesus was insane or the person that wrote His 
life was (Quoted from The Psychic Health of Jesus 
by Bundy, p. 26). 


This conclusion seems to imply that Jesus had 
only one biographer, but while the pathographers 
do betray an amazing amount of ignorance of the 
New Testament, we really believe that most of 
them at least know that Jesus did have more than 
one biographer. ‘This statement which represents 
fairly accurately the position of the pathographers 
who have taken up the cause of the moderns at the 
point where psychology forced a new interpreta- 
tion, reveals a most refreshing situation. At last 
after seventy-five years of controversy the historic 
Church and the liberal scholar agree that the Jesus 
of the Gospels cannot be squeezed into the normal 
human mould. His consciousness of His Messianic 
mission makes Him either super-normal or abnor- 
mal. It is well to have all those who are starting 
out, in this belated day, to travel this cycle of be- 
lief realize at the outset where it ends. Especially 
those modern Christian leaders who are venturing 
to call psychology so confidently to their support. 
It has taken a hundred years to round out this 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 205 


cycle, but it has reached its end, and it seems 
hardly necessary to start right out again in the 
twentieth century to repeat for America what Ger- 
many has so generously tested out for her. 

Thanks to the pathographers, the Christological 
problem has been narrowed down to the issue: 
Either the Jesus of the Gospels was insane or the 
writers of the Gospels were, or He was super- 
normal. After wading through the mass of litera- 
ture which these pathographers have written, and 
the amount of it is amazing, in their vain endeav- 
our to prove that Jesus was a paranoiac, one feels 
little concern over the ultimate issue. For search 
as these pathographers have with their powerful 
magnifying critical microscopic lenses to find some 
symptoms of psychic disorder in the personality of 
the Jesus of the Gospels, they have been able to 
accumulate less evidence, even from the Gospel 
narratives just as they are, to support their theory 
than in any other well-known human life. One 
constantly feels the urge of a desire to restrain 
these pathographers in their mad endeavour to es- 
tablish their pet obsession, lest unwittingly they 
convict themselves of the very insanity they are 
striving so desperately to fasten upon the mind 
of Jesus. Any single pamphlet or book with which 
we are acquainted, written to prove that Jesus was 
psychically unhealthy, furnishes much more evi- 
dence against the psychic health of its author than 
it is able to muster up against the psychic health of 
the Jesus of the Gospels. 

_ But as we accepted the proposition of the mod- 
erns given by Professor Eucken concerning the 


206 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


pure humanity of Jesus and then followed that 
idea to its doom, so let us now, for argument, 
accept the proposition of the pathographers that 
Jesus is a paranoiac, and see what happens. A 
paranoiac is a person who is obsessed with a belief 
in which he can persuade no sane person to con- 
cur. The obsession of Jesus upon which the major 
claim for His insanity is based is that He is the 
Messiah, the Christ. The first test for His sanity 
is to find whether any sane person agrees with Him 
in this belief. While He was still upon this earth 
there were many sane persons who openly agreed 
with Him. And since His Ascension, there has 
been a steadily growing multitude who believe so 
firmly that He is the Christ that they have been 
willing to make any sacrifice, to die if need be, 
rather than surrender this belief. To-day the 
greatest institution in the world, The Church of 
Jesus Christ, is built upon this belief. The exist- 
ence of this stupendous institution committed to 
this belief, and numbering among its members mil- 
lions of the choicest minds and spirits of the world, 
establishes the belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the 
Christ as a normal religious belief. 

A normal religious belief is a belief held by a 
majority of those who make up a certain type of 
civilization. This being true, the case of the 
pathographers is lost even before it has been fully 
presented to the world. The unbelieving psychol- 
ogists overreached their mark, when they rushed 
in to prove Jesus abnormal. For they leave all of 
those who follow the scientific evidence, with a 
super-normal Jesus on their hands. And theolo- 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 207 


gians have no right to ask more than this of psy- 
chology. For it cannot go beyond the limits of 
normal, abnormal, super-normal. But if the Jesus 
of the Gospels be forced into the super-normal 
class, He stands somewhere between man and God, 
—the typical mediatorial position. And the “ re- 
lentless Ejither-Or’’ of Professor Eucken is 
found to be an easily shattered barrier. In the 
same mysterious way in which medical science and 
psychology, through spiritual healing, have been 
forced to pay tribute to religion, so God through 
this century of critical scholarship has patiently, 
but surely, been leading the sincere, scholarly mind 
that has taken the trouble to follow the evidence 
through, to the place where the Jesus of the Gos- 
pels is becoming better known. He has been 
pushed up through the normal, through the ab- 
normal, to the super-normal, or mediatorial posi- 
tion. Here we come upon what may be pro- 
nounced as the most important of all the contribu- 
tions which modern thinking has unwittingly made 
to the solution of the Christological problem. Let 
us glance at another phase of it. 

No sooner had German Christianity succeeded 
in reducing Jesus to human dimensions, than it was 
discovered that religious faith must be provided 
with a substitute to take the place of the Christ 
whom modern thinking has taken away. So the 
imagination was immediately set at work to create 
out of mind-stuff a Christ to meet the newly dis- 
covered need. And this need is strictly media- 
torial. The human spirit possesses an insatiable 
desire for some kind of a concrete mediator be- 


208 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


tween the finite and the infinite, the human and the 
divine, man and God. And every non-theistic 
philosophy and science, and every super-belief cult 
unconsciously seeks to supply this mediator. Pro- 
fessor Drews gives psychology’s creation in this 
statement: 


Not the historical Jesus but the Christ as an idea, 
as an ideal of the divine humanity—must henceforth 
be the ground for religion. 

When we can and will no longer believe on acci- 
dental (!) personalities, we can and must believe on 
ideas”’ (Quoted from The Mythical Interpretation 
of the Gospels by Thorborn, p. xix). 


The words, “ must believe on ideas,’ state the 
proposition. The religious mind is so constituted 
that it can and must either believe on “ personali- 
ties” or on “ideas.” And Professor Drews has 
arrived at the place where he is of the opinion. 
that ideas furnish a more reliable foundation for 
faith than historical personalities. ‘To those who 
have little acquaintance with this theory, it may 
sound somewhat attractive. But any one who has 
given much study to super-belief cults finds this 
proposal very familiar. This new type of Christ 
as an idea, has strong affinities for Mrs. Eddy’s 
Christian Science use of the word idea. It has 
such rare possibilities for manipulation that it has 
made a strong appeal to the Christless in the 
United States. The great psychologist, Dr. G. 
Stanley Hall, ex-President of Clarke University, 
has given excellent expression to the idea in his 
work entitled Jesus Christ in the Light of Psy- 
chology. He introduces the subject by inferring 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 209 


that even historic Christianity made its Christ out 
of mind-stuff, and then goes on to show that mod- 
ern psychology has greatly improved upon the 
work of the historic Church in the Christ which 
it has produced. Upon this point he says: 


If the primitive Church made him, instead of his 
making the Church, the Church was then a mighty 
creative power. If he be conceived as the greatest 
projection that the folk-soul ever made, his figure 
and story are the most precious of all things, perhaps 
more potent as an ideal than as an antique reality. 


He continues along this same line: 


The Jesus of the Gospels died, but the idea of Jesus 
lives more truly now perhaps than he did then, and 
this is the true resurrection. The Jesus of history is 
crassly real. The Jesus of genetic psychology is the 
most precious and real thing ever made out of mind- 
stuff. 


Again he adds: 


If unconscious man-soul evolved him in the travail 
of ages, he becomes thus in a new sense the “ son of 
man,’ a Doppelganger of our inner, deeper, better 
nature. The believer’s insight and conviction are 
small and faint representatives of the same power 
that created this masterpiece of the race-soul, and 
faith in him is a flaming up in us of the age-long and 
eee aie collectivity and consensus that made it 
all. 


This most remarkable discussion of the histor- 
ical Jesus, Dr. Hall brings to a close with this 
statement: 


Whether we regard Jesus as myth or history, we all 


210 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


need him alike. If I hold him a better and purer ~ 
psychological being than any other, although made 
warp and woof of human wishes, and needs and 
ideals, I insist that on this basis I ought to be called 
an orthodox Christian, because thus to me he re- 
mains the highest, best, and most helpful of all who 
ever lived, whether that life be in Judea or in the soul 
of man (Vol. I, p. 33 f.). 


In a further effort to convince the world that 
he is an orthodox Christian, Dr. Hall appends this 
confession of faith: 


As a result of all this, I believe I can now repeat 
almost every clause of the Apostles’ Creed with a 
fervent sentiment of conviction. My intellectual in- 
terpretation of the meaning of each item of it prob- 
ably differs toto caelo from that of the average 
orthodox believer. To me not a clause of it is true in 
a crass literal, material sense, but all of it is true in a 
sense far higher, which is only symbolized on the 
literal plane. The change from my boyhood belief 
in it all has been to me all gain and no loss. Nothing 
has been dropped or denied, but only the mental 
imagery by which it is apprehended is changed (p. 
XVill). 

We have quoted from Dr. Hall at length to give 
the reader an idea of the way in which this new, 
yet very old, school of mythical interpretation goes 
about making a Christ out of mind-stuff. To the 
adolescent struggling with an attack of acute un- 
belief and to the chronic unbeliever this sort of 
an indiscriminate blending of fact and fiction has 
its attractions. But nothing is more abortive of 
sane thinking than such procedure. It is unbe- 
lievable that Dr. Hall can take his own statements 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 211 


seriously. For one who has lived in the atmos- 
phere of Mrs. Eddy’s non-sense world with its 
“spiritual” interpretation, these paragraphs read 
for all the world dike quotations from Science and 
Health. ‘Their kinship will be brought out later. 

Upon what ground a Jesus made wholly of mind- 
stuff becomes so much more satisfactory than an 
historical personality, Dr. Hall does not inform us. 
Nor does he explain how any article of the 
Apostles’ Creed can be “true in a sense far 
higher ” when it is the creation of the imagination 
—pure fiction, than when it is based upon his- 
torical facts—truth, which is always stranger than 
fiction. If there is anything within the realm of 
knowledge truer than fact and truth, all epistomol- 
ogy will have to be revised to make room for this 
new member of the family. Perhaps Dr. Hall has 
in mind something like Mrs. Eddy’s and Madame 
Blavatsky’s “Divine” truth. Both Professor 
Drews and Dr. Hall are scholars learned enough 
to recognize that their scheme which adroitly shifts 
the problem of the Christ from the objective his- 
torical foundation over into the realm of the sub- 
jective is nothing less than Ritschl’s value-judg- 
ment theory revived in a new guise; and is fraught 
with exactly the same old perils. 

In order to escape the trap into which they are 
being driven by the recoil of the scientific historical 
method of study which induction has unwittingly 
set for its anti-theistic and anti-Christian devotees, 
modern philosophy has decided that it also will 
have to double-cross reason and the will, so it is 
at present courting with all its ardour and devotion 


212 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


the imagination as the most comprehensive single 
principle, capable of explaining creative evolution. 
This is strange company both for psychology and 
philosophy. For this is the native land of occult- 
ism and super-beliefs. Let us introduce these mod- 
ern psychologists and philosophers to their new 
friends. Professor Drews and Dr. Hall are not 
the first to have conceived the idea of creating a 
Christ out of “ pure mind-stuff.”” Those who have 
made a study of the super-belief cults of occultism 
find this religious realm already embarrassed by 
an abundance of christs, all created out of mind- 
stuff. This is so true that the exact thinker does 
not dare to employ the unqualified word “ Christ” 
lest some super-belief cult appropriate his words 
about Christ and conscript them in the service of 
its cause, as does Mrs. Eddy the New Testament 
writings. The Christian preacher, teacher and 
writer should always prefix the identifying word 
“ Jesus ” to the word Christ or Saviour, for other- 
wise, super-belief cults may claim that he is teach- 
ing their beliefs. 

The creation of so many counterfeit christs in- 
terests the psychologist. For it discloses the fact 
that the human spirit and modern society cannot 
exist without a Christ of some kind. Take away 
the personality of Jesus Christ and the distraught 
human spirit will instinctively resort to the pre- 
Christian, pre-scientific phantasy method of mak- 
ing good this loss. Professor Drews said: 


When we can and will no longer believe on acci- 
dental (!) personalities, we can and must believe on 
ideas. . . . Christ as an idea, as an ideal of the 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 218 


divine humanity—must henceforth be the ground for 
religion. 

And Dr. Hall puts this psychological truth in 
these words: ‘ Whether we regard Jesus as a myth 
or history, we all need Him alike.” This testi- 
mony to humanity’s need for a Christ as a media- 
tor, is doubly impressive when it comes unso- 
licited from the enemies of the Christ of the his- 
toric Christian Church. The unfailing manner in 
which science, philosophy and their newly chosen 
colleagues, the super-belief cults, provide their ad- 
herents with christs is proof of this need. In an 
article entitled The Mediator or a Medium, pub- 
lished in the Biblical Review, April, 1920, we de- 
veloped this truth at some length. In this article, 
we show that it is only after the spiritist has re- 
jected The Mediator, that a medium is accepted. 

Madame Blavatsky, a Jewess, provides Theoso- 
phy with a Mahatma for its christ. Mrs. Besant’s, 
already quoted, description of a Mahatma brings 
this out. She says: 

A Mahatma was a man living in a human body, 
who, in the course of evolution by means of repeated 
incarnations, had reached the highest possible point 
of human perfection—physically, intellectually, and 
morally; a man who had acquired all the powers of 
the human soul, and had acquired all the knowledge 
to be found on earth—literally a Divine man. Mahat- 
mas had always possessed superhuman powers. They 
were able, indeed, to control the powers of nature 
(Quoted from The Theosophic Craze, p. 65). 

This is about as clever an imitation of the person- 
ality of the Jesus of the Gospels as any modern 
Jew has produced. 


214 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


In Christian Science the “ Divine Mary Baker 
Eddy ” in whose loving memory all of its churches 
are dedicated, is The Lord. While in Science and 
Health the Principle of scientific mental healing is 
featured as the Christ Peter confessed, for all 
practical purposes the “ Divine” Mrs. Eddy 
through whom God revealed the “ Truth” of 
Christian Science, is the christ. She is the 
“ Mother ” who constitutes the third person in the 
Christian Science trinity, which is, Father, Son, 
Mother. In her autobiography Mrs. Eddy mod- 
estly remarks: 


No person can compass or fulfill the individual 
mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No person can take 
the place of the author of Science and Health, the 
discoverer of Christian Science. Each individual 
must fulfill his own niche in time and eternity. The 
second appearing of Jesus is unquestionably the spir- 
itual advent of the advancing idea of God in Christian 
Science (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 96). 


(See further upon this point in The Non-Sense 
of Christian Science.) 

The christ of New Thought, as we learned, is 
the humanistic idea of the union of the Divine and 
the human which takes place in the “ Secret Place.” 
Mr. Dresser says: 

The ideal of this union is the Divine-human, the 
Christ. The place is the region of the incarnation of 


the heavenly heart in the human heart (Spiritual 
Health and Healing, p. 245). 


This list of christs might be indefinitely con- 
tinued, and to it might be added the “ Reason” 
of the rationalist, the ‘“ Law ” of the Materialist, 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 215 


the “Idea” of the psychologist. When these ideas 
are spelled with capitals, to all intents and prac- 
tical purposes they are accepted as substitute medi- 
ators between the finite and the infinite, between 
God and man, in other words—christs. 

There is profound food for thought in this im- 
perious demand of the human spirit and social 
groups for a Christ of some description. Indi- 
viduals and minor groups may be cheated out of 
their rights, and worry along for a time with sub- 
stitutes. But history has proven that the demo- 
cratic State, the Church, the Christian home, that 
is—modern society—cannot be permanently 
cheated without disintegration. The indestructi- 
bility of the human need for the Christ is one of 
the greatest psychological facts of religion. Na- 
ture’s method is that of development. First the 
idea, then the desire, then the sense of need, then ~ 
nature creates that which meets this newly devel- 
oped need. The wish for a Christ or mediator is 
one of the earliest psychological reactions of the 
human spirit in its individual, social and cosmic 
environment. To meet this need, it created out of 
“mind-stuff ” the best substitutes it could manu- 
facture. In the fullness of time God sends a real 
mediator in the unique person of Jesus, the Christ. 
Wherever He has been accepted in the fullness of 
His Personality, He has met the Mediatorial need 
of the individual and society. Only where He has 
been rejected, or depersonalized, has a need arisen 
for something else. And the indestructibility of 
this Christ is one of the most amazing facts of 
history. 


216 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


The Jews of His day tried crucifying Jesus, but 
the resurrection upset their calculations. The 
critics tried to evaporate Him into a myth, but 
after their chemical experiment, He remained the 
substance of a real historical person. ‘The psy- 
chologists then tried to dispose of Him by com- 
mitting Him to an insane asylum, but upon ex- 
amination He was found to be so much more sane 
than His conspirators, that His accusers, being 
afraid of being convicted themselves, have gone 
out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even until 
the last: and Jesus is left alone; the only perfectly 
sane person who ever trod this earth. After two 
thousand years of the trial and error method of 
arriving at the truth concerning Him, He stands 
at the beginning of the second quarter of the 
twentieth century, a more commanding and more 
baffling figure than at the beginning of the first 
Christian century. The Gospels are being studied 
again in the light of all the new knowledge which 
the past century and a quarter has brought to 
light, and the revelations of historical and psy- 
chological facts are among the most important 
from the standpoint of the Christological problem 
that have been discovered. 

This brings us back to our starting point. Is 
not one of the by-products of the acute and 
chronic unbelief with which we began our study, 
loss of faith in the Gospel of His Person and a 
stressing in its place the Gospel of His precepts? 
The normal religious health of the Christian and 
the Church cannot be sustained on this vitaminless 
diet. As a result the religious life of Christians 


BELIEF THAT JESUS IS CHRIST 217 


thus fed grows gradually weaker until indiffer- 
ence, the languor of religious undernourishment, 
creeps on. Indifference has one unmistakable 
symptom, it is loss of spiritual appetite. Any 
crisis in life, or even the haunting memory of 
former religious health, makes such persons fit sub- 
jects for super-belief cult proselyters. All rival 
religions recognize that the personality of Jesus 
Christ is the unique feature of the Christian re- 
ligion. So they center their attacks upon the 
Christological front. His teaching they can take 
care of, if only they can persuade modern Chris- 
tians to keep His personality in the background. 

So successful have these rivals been of late, and 
so short-sighted many modern Christians, that 
many expiring religions are taking on a new lease 
of life. A New York Rabbi announced recently 
his sermon theme thus: “The Fundamentals of 
Judaism as a Religion for the World.” Not for 
two thousand years has Judaism indulged the 
dream of world conquest! The pathetic part of 
the situation lies in the fact that the modern Chris- 
tians who have retreated from the Christological 
front, think that this is good strategy. They hon- 
estly believe that the cause of Christianity can thus 
be advanced. But the whole history of the Chris- 
tian Church is against this delusion. C. $. Streat- 
field sums up Christian history in this thought-pro- 
voking passage: 


The creative, formative power of Christianity is 
the Personality of Christ. In that Personality, truly 
divine as well as human, the world has found the self- 
revelation of God. Let that Personality be obscured 


218 ACUTE AND CHRONIC UNBELIEF 


or let it be robbed of its Divinity, and the world is 
thrown back on itself, and its own vain efforts, if 
haply it may by searching find out God—with the 
inevitable result that agnostic philosophy takes the 
place of definite and active faith (The Self-Inter- 
pretation of Jesus Christ, p. 42). 


Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the 
scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the 
same is become the head of the corner: this is the 
Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? 
(Matt. 21: 42). 


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such as: ‘‘The Art of Making Friends;’’ ‘Choice Seats;’ 
“The Tyranny of Trifles;” ‘‘Precious Tact;” ‘‘Crabbed 
China;” ‘‘Mind Switches;” ‘“‘Dim Defiles,’”’ etc. 


DANIEL A. POLING, LL.D. 


Associate President and Citizenship Supt., 
The United Society of Christian Endeavor. 


Learn to Live 


Straight Talks for To-day. Introduction by 
David J. Burrell, D.D. $1.50. 

Dr. Poling is a man all afire with genuine Christian 
optimism, and he has succeeded in interjecting a generous 
saat of his own genial and pleasing personality into his 
wor « 


WILLIAM D. UPSHAW 


Congressman from the Fifth District of the State of 
Georgia to the United States House of Representatives, 


Clarion Calls from Capitol es 
1.50. 


“What a hurricane he is, this Congressman from Geor- 
gia. These addresses are beautiful, but teeming with 
irresistible logic. God bless this congressman-preacher. Tt 
will do any man good to read this book.”—Methodts¢ 
Protestant, 


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